And you were there in the start of it all and you folded your hands like little doves that would fly away like an afterthought and you turned to me the window light on your face and you asked me something that I did not recognize like a great throng of people who are not you and I asked are we in a church and you answered with the look on your face of someone grieving something gone for years but that they had been reminded of by a catch in the light or in someone’s voice and I think maybe it could have been mine and I looked away thickly my head was in jelly and I didn’t get an answer from you but I got one
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I looked at the man in front of us with glasses he was speaking and holding a book and I didn’t understand him he was far away and I could tell I was missing something important and you nodded to yourself at something he said
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+ The angel to Abraham | Autocento of the breakfast table
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The angel to Abraham
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Abraham, Abraham, you are old and cannot hear: what if you miss my small voice amongst the creaking of your own grief, kill your son unknowing of what he will be, and commit Israel to nothing?
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Abraham, you must know or hope that God will not allow your son to die; you must know that this is a test, but then why are you so bent on Isaac’s destruction? Look at your eyes; there is more than fear there. I see in your eyes desperation, a manic passion to do right by your God whom you are not able to see or know.
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Am I too late? I will try to stay your old hands, the knife clenched within them, intent on ending life.
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Will you hear my small voice amongst the creaking, or will it be the chance bleating of a passing ram?
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diff --git a/apollo11.html b/apollo11.html
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+ On seeing the panorama of the Apollo 11 landing site | Autocento of the breakfast table
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On seeing the panorama of the Apollo 11 landing site
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So it’s the fucking moon. Big deal. As if you haven’t seen it before, hanging in the sky like a piece of rotten meat nailed to the wall,
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a maudlin love letter (the i’s dotted with hearts) tacked to the sky’s door like ninety-eight theses. Don’t stare at it like it means anything.
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Don’t give it the chance to collect meaning from your hand like an old pigeon. Don’t dare ascribe it a will, or call it fickle, or think it has any say
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in your affairs. It’s separated from your life by three hundred eighty-four thousand miles of space, the same distance you stepped away from time that night
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you said your love was broken, a crippled gyroscope knocking in the dark. It was then that time fell apart, had a nervous breakdown and started following you
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everywhere, moonfaced, always asking where you’re going. You keep trying to get away from it but it nuzzles closer and sings you songs that sound like the cooing of a dove that will only escape again into an empty sky at dawn.
What is poetry? Poetry is. Inasmuch as life is, so is poetry. Here is the problem: life is very big and complex. Human beings are neither. We are small, simple beings that don’t want to know all of the myriad interactions happening all around us, within us, as a part of us, all the hours of every day. We much prefer knowing only that which is just in front of our faces, staring us back with a look of utter contempt. This is why many people are depressed.
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Poetry is an attempt made by some to open up our field of view, to maybe check on something else that isn’t staring us in the face so contemptibly. Maybe something else is smiling at us, we think. So we write poetry to force ourselves to look away from the mirror of our existence to see something else.
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This is generally painful. To make it less painful, poetry compresses reality a lot to make it more consumable. It takes life, that seawater, and boils it down and boils it down until only the salt remains, the important parts that we can focus on and make some sense of the senselessness of life. Poetry is life bouillon, and to thoroughly enjoy a poem we must put that bouillon back into the seawater of life and make a delicious soup out of it. To make this soup, to decompress the poem into an emotion or life, requires a lot of brainpower. A good reader will have this brainpower. A good poem will not require it.
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What this means is: a poem should be self-extracting. It should be a rare vanilla in the bottle, waiting only for someone to open it and sniff it and suddenly there they are, in the orchid that vanilla came from, in the tropical land where it grew next to its brothers and sister vanilla plants. They feel the pain of having their children taken from them. A good poem leaves a feeling of loss and of intense beauty. The reader does nothing to achieve this—they are merely the receptacle of the feeling that the poem forces onto them. In a way, poetry is a crime. But it is the most beautiful crime on this crime-ridden earth.
This is my brain he wrote. This is my brain and all it contains. ‘I contain multitudes’ said Legion. I think it was Legion. The big heading he had written at the top of the page (ART it read, but only when looking at it from his point of view) sat cold and alone, neglected in the white space surrounding it. He noticed this presently (but not after he had written a little more about multitudes), paused, frowned, and began to write again.
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ART stands alone at the top of a blank page he wrote. It follows itself in circles its own footprints in a circle around its own name. It leads nowhere but is present everywhere. It contains It contains multitudes. Every painting ever made is a painting of every other painting. Every song is a remix, a cover version. He crossed out the part about songs for getting off topic. He made a note to himself in the margin—Music is not ART.
Paul took his axe and went out into the woods to chop trees. Or rather he went into the trees to chop wood. He wasn’t sure. Either way it helped him think. Last time he’d gone out, he’d had an idea for a shoe-insert company he could start called “Paul’s Bunyons.” He chuckled to himself as he shouldered his axe and went into the forest.
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Deep into the woods he admired the organization of the trees. “They grow wherever they fall” he said “but still none is too close to another.” He sounded like Solomon to himself. He imagined he had a beard.
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He walked for a long time in the shadows of the forest, in its coolness. It sounded like snow had fallen but it was still October. The first time the trees seemed to radiate out from him in straight lines he stopped and turned around four times. After he walked on he noticed it happened fairly often.
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Still, after he felled his first tree that day he realized they grew from the epicenter of his axe. He paused in the small dark sound of the forest quiet.
ART and CRAFT are only the inside and outside of the same building. The ceiling is—here he put his eraser to his bottom lip, thinking. He crossed out The ceiling is.The floor is reality and the ceiling is aspirationdesire that which is desired. CRAFT is building a chair from wood. ART is using the wood as a substrate for an emotional message to a future person, the READER / VIEWER.
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The important thing is they are both made of wood. The important thing is they were both, at one point, alive natural things that grew and changed and pushed their way out of the dirt into the air. They formed buildings out of the air. They didn’t even try.
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What separates us from them, the trees? We have to try. We must labor to create our ART, our buildings of air. We lay them out brick by brick, we build them up by disintegrating trees and forming them again into what they were before. Why must we do this? are there any advantages to this human method?
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Our advantage is memory. Our advantage is the reaching-out over space and time to others with our words, our ART. Our buildings last for generations, and after they are demolished they are written about, photographs are taken, we remember. The act of memory is our only ART.
He woke up after eleven and didn’t go outside all day, not even to his Writing Shack. What did he do?
+
He watched late morning cartoons meant for children too young to go to school. He ate bowls of cereal. He watched his mother play dominoes. He played dominoes with her for a little while until she was winning by such a margin it wasn’t fun for either of them. He went down to the basement to do his laundry. He pulled the chain for the light and it turned on like magic. “Electricity is like magic” he said to himself. He thought he would like to write that down but his Implements were in the Shack. He’d already built up so much momentum inside.
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Inertia? he thought. “What’s the difference between inertia and momentum” he asked himself as he hefted dirty clothes into the washer. “Maybe inertia is the momentum of not moving” he thought as he measured and poured the blue detergent into the drum. “Momentum is the inertia of moving forward through time” as he selected WARM-COLD on the dial and pulled it out to start the machine. “What do you think is the difference between inertia and momentum” he asked his mother when he opened the door at the top of the stairs.
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“When you switch over your laundry could you bring up my underwear from the dryer” she asked not looking up from her dominoes. A thread of smoke curled from her cigarette and spread out on the ceiling.
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diff --git a/compile.sh b/compile.sh
index 3877be0..228af38 100644
--- a/compile.sh
+++ b/compile.sh
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# for windows only right now
-for file in *.txt; do # TODO: change this to work with globs & args & stuff
- pandoc -f markdown \ # all files are in pandoc's markdown
- -t html5 \ # they're being outputted to html5
- --template=_template.html \ # use this file as a template
- --smart \ # smart quotes, etc.
+for file in src/*.txt; do # TODO: change this to work with globs & args & stuff
+ echo -n "Compiling $file ..."
+ pandoc -f markdown \
+ -t html5 \
+ --template=_template.html \
+ --smart \
$file \
-o "${file%.txt}.html"
+ echo " Done."
done
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+echo "Moving files to build directory ..."
+mv src/*.html ./
diff --git a/deadman.html b/deadman.html
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+ Dead man | Autocento of the breakfast table
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Dead man
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A dead man finds his way into our hearts simply by opening the door and walking in. He pours himself a drink, speaks aimlessly about hunting or some bats he saw on the way over, wheeling around each other. Look how they spin, he says, it’s like the ripples atoms make as they hurl past each other in the space between their bodies. We mention the eels at the aquarium, how their bodies knot while mating. The dead man was a boyscout once, and tied a lot of knots. His favorite was the one with the rabbit and the hole, and the rabbit going in and out and around the tree. The dead man liked it because he liked to pretend that the rabbit was running from a fox, and the rabbit always ended up safe, back in his hole.
So Death plays his little fucking trumpet. So what, says the boy.
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+ — Larry Levis
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He didn’t have any polish so he spit-shined the whole thing, top to bottom. It gleamed like maybe a tomato on the vine begging to be picked and thrown on some caprese. Death loved caprese.
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He stood up and put the horn to his lips, imagining it was a woman he loved. He blushed as he realized it was a terrible metaphor. He practiced for six hours a day—what else to do?
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Death looks at himself in the mirror as he plays. The trumpet is suspended in midair. Damn vampire rules. Death is always worried he might have missed a spot shaving but he’ll never know unless a stranger is polite enough. Not that he ever goes out or meets anyone.
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He wakes up late these days. Stays in bed later. He thinks he might be depressed. The caprese has gotten soggy since he made it, maybe three days ago or maybe just two. The sun streams through his kitchen blinds like smoke. He decides to go to the arcade. When he gets there,
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there’s only a little boy with dead eyes. So far so good. He’s playing a first-person shooter. Death walks past him and watches out of the corner of his eye. The kid’s good. Death wants to congratulate him. His trumpet is in his hand.
It had gotten cold. He went to lay down in bed with a pad and paper. He began to write. Although he hadn’t tried it much in bed before, he liked it mostly. His arm got tired journeying across the page like a series of switchbacks down the wall of the Grand Canyon. He wrote this down in the margin, for later:
+
Arm journeying across \
+ the pg. like a \
+ series of switch-
+ backs down the wall \
+ of the Grand Canyon \
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His arm began to pain him. He adjusted his position in the bed. It didn’t help much with the pain. It still hurt as he wrote. He began to be distracted by his mother’s music playing in the next room.
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“Could you turn that down please” he hollered across the wall to his mother. She made no reply (music too loud). He gave his arm a break to look at what he’d written. He couldn’t make heads or tails of it. It looked like Arabic.
YOU CANNOT DISCOVER ART ART MUST BE CREATED he sat on the couch at home while his mother watched TV and smoked. Dinner had been chicken and peas with milk and afterward Paul and his mother sat on opposite ends of the couch. At intervals she would look sideways at Paul writing. He pretended not to notice.
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ART = ARTIFICE he wrote. ARTIFICE MEANS UNNATURAL. ARTIFICE MEANS BUILT. TO BUILD MEANS TO FIND A PATTERN & FIND A PATTERN IS WHAT WE ARE GOOD AT. He thought about this while someone else won a car.
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“Do you think humans are good at finding patterns because we are hunters” he asked his mother. She looked sideways at him and said “Sure Paul.” “Early on in our evolution we were hunters right? And to hunt we had to see the patterns in seemingly random events, like where the gazelle went each year” “Paul I’m trying to watch TV. If you’re going to write this stuff go do it in your room you’re distracting.” Paul got up and went to his room and lay down on his bed.
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“If the gazelle went to the same place every year” he thought “did they know the pattern too? Or was it random for them, did they think each year ‘This seems like a good spot let’s graze here’ without knowing?”
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He wrote PATTERN = MEMORY in his notebook.
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diff --git a/elegyforanalternateself.html b/elegyforanalternateself.html
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+ Elegy for an alternate self | Autocento of the breakfast table
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Elegy for an alternate self
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Say there are no words. Say that we are conjoined from birth, or better still, say we are myself. —But I still talk to myself, I build my world through language, so if we say there are no words this is not enough. Say we are instead some animal, or better yet, a plant, or a flagellum motoring aimlessly around. (Say that humans are the only things that reason. Say that we’re the only things that worry.)
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Say that I am separate. To say there’s everything else and then there’s me is wrong. Each thing is separate: there is no whole in the world. Say this is both good and bad, or rather, say there is no good or bad but only being, more and more of it always added, none taken out though it can be forgotten. Say that forgetting is a function of our remembering. (Say that humans only worry about separation. Say that only humans feel it.)
I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers and queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.
“Is man the natural thing that makes unnatural things” he thought to himself as he looked out the kitchen window at the shed. He wondered who built the shed for the first time since he’d been going out there. “Mom who built the shed out back” he asked. “That was your father” she said.
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His father. Paul had never met him. His mother had said when he was a kid that his father was caught by a riptide while swimming in the ocean. He hadn’t noticed what was happening until the land was a thin line on the horizon. He became exhausted swimming back and drowned. His body was found a week later by the coroner’s estimate. Paul never really believed this story because his mother’s face was sad in the wrong way when she told it.
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She said he looked like his father but she also said all men look alike. Paul realized he’d been standing at the kitchen window for a long time looking out at the shed without realizing it. He went out to take an inventory of everything inside.
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“Where you going” asked his mother. “To the shed. I’ll be back in a bit” he said.
You never can tell just when Charlie Sheen will enter your life. For me, it was last Thursday. I was reading some translation of a Japanese translation of “The Raven” in which the Poe and the raven become friends. At one point the raven gets very sick and Poe feeds him at his bedside and nurses him back to health. The story was very heartwarming and sad at the same time and my tears were welling up when suddenly I heard a knock on my door.
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I shuffled over, sniffling but managing to keep my cheeks dry to open it. Of course Charlie was beaming on the other side, with a bag of flowers and a grin like a dog’s. He bounded in the room without saying hello and threw the flowers in the sink, opened the refrigerator and started poking around. I said “It’s nice to see you too” and went to my room to get a camera, as well as a notebook for him to sign.
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When I came back he was on the floor, hunched and groaning. I looked on the table to see a month-old half-gallon of milk—now cottage cheese—half-empty and dripping. The remnants were on his mouth, and at once I saw my chance to become Poe in this translation of a translation of a translation. I knelt next to Charlie, cradled his head in my lap. He looked up at me with a stare full of terror. I returned it levelly, making cooing noises at him until he calmed down.
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When he was calm he excused himself to be sick on my toilet. He wouldn’t let me follow but said he would sign whatever I liked when he got back. After half an hour passed and all I’d had for company was the ticking of the clock, I went to the bathroom door. I knocked carefully—once, then twice—to no beaming face, no flowers. I opened the door. There was shit on the floor and the window was open. There was a breeze blowing.
His mother ran out of the house in her nightgown. “What the hell do you think you’re doing” she hollered as Paul watched the shed. “I’m burning the shed down” he said smiling “isn’t it warm?” “It’s warm enough out here without that burning down” she said “go get the hose and put this thing out.” “But Mom” “Do it” she said in the tone of voice that meant Do it now. He went around the side of the house screwed the nozzle on grabbed the end of the hose pulled it around the house and waited for water to come out the end. When it did it was not in a very strong stream. “I don’t think this is going to work” Paul said to his mother. “God damn it I have to call the Fire Department” she said and went inside the house. The shed continued in its burning.
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After the Fire Department put out the fire one of the men said “Your mother says you set this building on fire. You know Arson is a major offense.” “I set it on fire” Paul said. “Why?” “Because ART wants to be random, it wants to be natural, but it isn’t. Humans create ART because we can’t help but see patterns in randomness. But we feel guilty about it.” The man nodded to another man in a blue uniform. “We want the ART to feel natural, to feel random, but we can’t stop seeing the patterns” as the man in blue walked over and put a hand on Paul’s shoulder “ART is unnatural by its very nature. I took my ART and gave it back to nature” as the man led him over to a black and white car and put him inside. He was saying something about Paul’s right. “No it’s my left that was hurt” said Paul “but it’s all better now.”
He looked down at his hands idly while he was typing. They were dry and cracked in places. He thought he might start bleeding so he went inside for some lotion.
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“Do we have any lotion” he asked his mother. “In the medicine cabinet” she said without looking up from the TV. He walked into the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror. “I look strange” he said to himself “I look like a teenager.” He stared into his right eye, then his left. He saw nothing but his own reflection fish-eyed in his pupils. He opened the medicine cabinet.
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Back in his Writing Shack, he started to type.
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What is it about hands that gives
+ them such power? It is that their
+ power is hidden in the arm. Push
+ on the inside of the wrist--the
+ hand closes. Reach under the skin
+ and pull on the outside tendons--
+ the hand opens again. Hands are
+ only machines for grasping,
+ controlled by the arm, not the
+ mind.
His mother drove him to the Hardware Store on a Tuesday. “I’m glad to see you’ve taken my advice for once” she said. “What do you mean.” “Applying to work at the Hardware Store. I’m proud of you Paul.”
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“Oh right. Sure thing.” They pulled into the parking lot. “Just be a minute” he said as he opened the car door.
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He walked under the door resplendent in its King William orange and white. He saw the towering rows of shelves like mountain ridges in Hell. He strolled among the fixtures, pipes, planks, sheets, plants (Why plants? he thought), switches. He realized he didn’t know the first thing about building furniture. “I don’t know the first thing” he muttered to himself “about building furniture. I know the last thing would be a couch or chair or stool but the first thing is a mystery.” He turned around and walked straight out of the store and to his mother’s car without looking up.
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“How’d it go” she asked starting the car. “Great” he said.
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+ How it happened | Autocento of the breakfast table
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How it happened
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I was away on vacation when I heard— someone sat at my desk while I was away. They took my pen, while I was taking surf lessons, and wrote the sun into the sky. They pre-approved the earth and the waters, and all of the living things, without even having the decency to text me. It was not I who was behind the phrase “creeping things.” When I got back, of course I was pissed, but it was already written into the policy. I’m just saying: don’t blame me for Cain killing Abel. That was a murder. I’m not a cop. The Tower of Babel fell on its own. The ark never saw a single drop of rain. I’m the drunk sitting on the curb who just pissed his pants, holding up a sign asking where I am.
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+ How to read this | Autocento of the breakfast table
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How to read this
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This book is an exploration of life, of all possible lives that could be lived. Each of the poems contained herein have been written by a different person, with his own history, culture, and emotions. True, they are all related, but no more than any of us is related through our genetics, our shared planet, or our yearnings.
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Fernando Pessoa wrote poems under four different identities—he called them heteronyms—that were known during his lifetime, though after his death over sixty have been found and catalogued. He called them heteronyms as opposed to pseudonyms because they were much more than names he wrote under. They were truly different writing selves, concerned with different ideas and writing with different styles: Alberto Caeiro wrote pastorals; Ricardo Reis wrote more formal odes; Álvaro de Campos wrote these long, Whitman-esque pieces (one to Whitman himself); and Pessoa’s own name was used for poems that are kind of similar to all the others. It seems as though Pessoa found it inefficient to try and write everything he wanted only in his own self; rather he parceled out the different pieces and developed them into full identities, at the cost of his own: “I subsist as a kind of medium of myself, but I’m less real than the others, less substantial, less personal, and easily influenced by them all.” de Campos said of him at one point, “Fernando Pessoa, strictly speaking, doesn’t exist.”
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It’s not just Pessoa—I, strictly speaking, don’t exist, both as the specific me that writes this now and as the concept of selfhood, the ego. Heraclitus famously said that we can’t step into the same river twice, and the fact of the matter is that we can’t occupy the same self twice. It’s constantly changing and adapting to new stimuli from the environment, from other selves, from inside itself, and each time it forms anew into something that’s never existed before. The person I am beginning a poem is a separate being than the one I am finishing a poem, and part of it is the poem I’ve written has brought forth some other dish onto the great table that is myself.
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In the same way, with each poem you read of this, you too could become a different person. Depending on which order you read them in, you could be any number of possible people. If you follow the threads I’ve laid out for you, there are so many possible selves; if you disregard those and go a different way there are quite a few more. However, at the end of the journey there is only one self that you will occupy, the others disappearing from this universe and going maybe somewhere else, maybe nowhere at all.
+
There is a scene in The Neverending Story where Bastian is trying to find his way out of the desert. He opens a door and finds himself in the Temple of a Thousand Doors, which is never seen from the outside but only once someone enters it. It is a series of rooms with six sides each and three doors: one from the room before and two choices. In life, each of these rooms is a moment, but where Bastian can choose which of only two doors to enter each time, in life there can be any number of doors and we don’t always choose which to go through—in fact, I would argue that most of the time we aren’t allowed the luxury.
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What happens to those other doors, those other possibilities? Is there some other version of the self that for whatever complexities of circumstance and will chose a different door at an earlier moment? The answer to this, of course, is that we can never know for sure, though this doesn’t keep us from trying through the process of regret. We go back and try that other door in our mind, extrapolating a possible present from our own past. This is ultimately unsatisfying, not only because whatever world is imagined is not the one currently lived, but because it becomes obvious that the alternate model of reality is not complete: we can only extrapolate from the original room, absolutely without knowledge of any subsequent possible choices. This causes a deep disappointment, a frustration with the inability to know all possible timelines (coupled with the insecurity that this may not be the best of all possible worlds) that we feel as regret.
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In this way, every moment we live is an elegy to every possible future that might have stemmed from it. Annie Dillard states this in a biological manner when she says in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, “Every glistening egg is a memento mori.” Nature is inefficient—it spends a hundred lifetimes to get one that barely works. The fossil record is littered with the failed experiments of evolution, many of which failed due only to blind chance: an asteroid, a shift in weather patterns, an inefficient copulation method. Each living person today has twenty dead standing behind him, and that only counts the people that actually lived. How many missed opportunities stand behind any of us?
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The real problem with all of this is that time is only additive. There’s no way to dial it back and start over, with new choices or new environments. Even when given the chance to do something again, we do it again, with the reality given by our previous action. Thus we are constantly creating and being created by the world. The self is never the same from one moment to the next.
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A poem is like a snapshot of a self. If it’s any good, it captures the emotional core of the self at the time of writing for communication with future selves, either within the same person or outside of it. Thus revision is possible, and the new poem created will be yet another snapshot of the future self as changed by the original poem. The page becomes a window into the past, a particular past as experienced by one self. The poem is a remembering of a self that no longer exists, in other words, an elegy.
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A snapshot doesn’t capture the entire subject, however. It leaves out the background as it’s obscured by foreground objects; it fails to include anything that isn’t contained in its finite frame. In order to build a working definition of identity, we must include all possible selves over all possible timelines, combined into one person: identity is the combined effect of all possible selves over time. A poem leaves much of this out: it is the one person standing in front of twenty ghosts.
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A poem is the place where the selves of the reader and the speaker meet, in their respective times and places. In this way a poem is outside of time or place, because it changes its location each time it’s read. Each time it’s two different people meeting. The problem with a poem is that it’s such a small window—if we met in real life the way we met in poems, we would see nothing of anyone else but a square the size of a postage stamp. It has been argued this is the way we see time and ourselves in it, as well: Vonnegut uses the metaphor of a subject strapped to a railroad car moving at a set pace, with a six-foot-long metal tube placed in front of the subject’s eye; the landscape in the distance is time, and what we see is the only way in which we interact with it. It’s the same with a poem and the self: we can only see and interact with a small kernel. This is why it’s possible to write more than one poem.
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Due to this kernel nature of poetry, a good poem should focus itself to extract as much meaning as possible from that one kernel of identity to which it has access. It should be an atom of selfhood, irreducible and resistant to paraphrase, because it tries to somehow echo the large unsayable part of identity outside the frame of the self. It is the kernel that contains a universe, or that speaks around one that’s hidden; if it’s a successful poem then it makes the smallest circuit possible. This is why the commentary on poems is so voluminous: a poem is tightly packed meaning that commentators try to unpack to get at that universality inside it. A fortress of dialectic is constructed that ultimately obstructs the meaning behind the poem; it becomes the foreground in the photograph that disallows us to view the horizon beyond it.
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With this in mind, I collect these poems that were written over a period of four years into this book. Where I can, I insert cross-references (like the one above, in the margin) to other pieces in the text where I think the two resonate in some way. You can read this book in any way you’d like: you can go front-to-back, or back-to-front, or you can follow the arrows around, or you can work out a complex mathematical formula with Merseinne primes and logarithms and the 2000 Census information, or you can go completely randomly through like a magazine, or at least the way I flip through magazines. I think writing is a communication of the self, and I think this is the best way to communicate mine in all its multiversity.
It’s all jokes Paul wrote in what he was now calling his Hymnal. He had been writing non-stop all day, because he didn’t count pee- or cigarette- breaks. All art is an inside joke. The symbology involved must be—and here he put down his pen and held his head in his hands. He could never think of the word—he said often that he had no words. He opened to a new page in his Hymnal. On the top of it was written in bold script HYMN 386: JOKES.
+
Paul scowled. Who had written in his Hymnal? he wondered. He said it out loud a moment after: “Who has written in my Hymnal?” He realized he was alone in his Writing Shack, which was really a shed in the back of his mother’s garden. He wondered why he had to say his thoughts before they became real to him (if this was a habit or an inborn trait). He realized simultaneously that
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he could ask someone and
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that this was something he wondered every time he spoke his thoughts out loud.
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He resolved to put the issue to rest by asking someone.
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+ I am | Autocento of the breakfast table
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I am a great pillar of white smoke. I am Lot’s nameless wife encased in salt. I am the wound on Christ’s back as he moans with the pounding of a hammer on his wrist. I am the nail that holds my house together. It is a strong house, built on a good foundation. In the winter, it is warm and crawling things cannot get in. This house will never burn down. It is the house that I built, with my body and with my strength. I am the only one who lives here. I am both father and mother to a race of dust motes that worship me as a god. I have monuments built daily in my honor in dark corners around the house. I destroy all of them before I go to bed, but in the morning there are still more. I don’t think I know where all of them are. I don’t think I can get to all of them anymore. There are too many.
He wrote JOKES on the top of a page in his notebook. He had run out of notecards and hadn’t been able to convince his mother to go to the Office Supply Store for him. He left a space underneath it and wrote.
+
“Tell us a joke” the listeners say to the clown. They have gather together in the clearing because they have heard he would be there, and they have heard he knew very funny jokes that were also true. “Tell us a joke that is true” they say.
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The clown does not move from the stump. He doesn’t move at all. The listeners watch, gap-mouthed, as a butterfly lands on his hat. A breeze ruffles his coat and the butterfly flies away. Hours pass. The listeners grow impatient. Some begin yelling insults at the clown. Eventually, they begin to walk away into the woods.
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The moon rises on the clearing. The only people left are the clown and a listener, the last listener. She has been waiting for the joke a long time. The clown opens his mouth and she leans in closer to hear. He closes it as a tear falls onto his coat, then another. He opens his mouth again in a sob. The listener walks over to him and puts a hand on his shoulder.
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“I’m sorry” says the clown. “Sorry for what” she asks. “I don’t know. I don’t know any jokes.” He disappears. The last listener sits on the log and looks at the sky. There are no stars.
He shrugged the wood off his shoulder, letting it fall with a clog onto the earth floor of his Writing Shack. He exhaled looking out of the window. He hoped to see a bird fly by, maybe a blue jay or raven. No bird did. He inhaled. He exhaled again in a way that could only be classified as a sigh. He sat down at his writing desk. He began shuffling through what he’d written, trying to find some sort of pattern.
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“Each piece of paper—each leaf—” at this he smiled— “is like a tree in the forest.” He was writing as he thought aloud. “I, as the artist, as the writer, must select which to use, chop down those trees, bring them back to my shed and—and—” he frowned as he realized the only end to this metaphor was fire. He ran his fingers through his hair in a self-soothing gesture.
His first chair was a stool. It was an uneven wobbly stool that would not support even forty pounds. “So my first chair is a broken stool” he said after nearly breaking his tailbone on the dirt floor. “Maybe I should start again but this time only with legs.” He began again but this time only with legs. He built one leg, which means he cut a straight piece of wood down to four feet in length, whittled the bark off, and sanded it down smooth in what he was now calling his Woodworking Shack. He typed up a note on how to make chair legs.
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MAKING CHAIR LEGS
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+ 1. get longish piece of wood
+ 2. cut it to length (4 feet I'd
+ recommend)
+ 3. whittle off bark
+ 4. sand smooth the leg
+
After he tried remembered tried standing the leg up, failing, and after much thought realizing that the ends needed to be flat, he typed one more line on his notecard:
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5. make ends flat
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He had no tools with which to flatten the ends of his leg.
The definition of happiness is doing stuff that you really like. That stuff can be eating soup, going to the bathroom, walking the dog, playing Dungeons and Dragons; whatever keeps your mind off the fact that you’re so goddamn unhappy all the time. That, incidentally, is the definition of like: that feeling you get when you forget how miserable you are for just a little bit. Thus people like doing stuff they like all the time, as often as possible; because if they remember how horrible they really feel at not having a background to put themselves against, they will want to hurt themselves and those around them.
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The funny thing is that something we people really like to do is hurt ourselves and those around us. We do this by thinking other people are more unhappy than we are. We convince themselves that we are truly happy, ecstatic even, while they merely plod around life half-heartedly, or, if they’re lucky, incorrectly. We take it upon ourselves (seeing as we are so happy, and can spare a little bit of happiness) to help them become happy as well. We fail to realize that the people will probably not appreciate our thinking that we’re better than they are somehow, for that is what we do even if we don’t mean it. We forget that we are also unhappy, and that we are just doing things we like in order to cheer ourselves up a little bit, which really means that this cheering is working; but there is such a thing as working too well. So in a sense what I’m doing here is cheering myself up by reminding you that you are unhappy; I’m trying to keep you honest in your unhappiness; and I admit this is usually called a dick move.
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In fact, the best way to overcome happy-hungering (this is the term as I dub it) is commit as many dick moves as possible, to keep people remembering that unhappiness abounds. If you see someone smiling like a little dog who knows it’s about to get pet or get a treat or go to the vet to donate doggy sperm, smile back. Grin toothily (a little too toothily for a little too long). Their smile will start to fade if you’re doing it right. Saunter to them, slide as if you’re an Olympic quality ice-skater, as if you’re a really good bowler who knows he’s playing against twelve year olds and’ll win by a hundred. Get really close. Far too close for what most people would call comfort. And remind them of how awful life can be: “I really like your shirt—really only children chained to looms can get that tight of a weave,” you can say, or “You’re not really going to recycle that coffee cup, are you?” They will probably get angry, but that’s what’s supposed to happen. By making dick moves, you can overcome what may be the biggest evil on this earth: Happy-Hungering.
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+ Love Song | Autocento of the breakfast table
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Love Song
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Walking along in the dark is a good way to begin a song. Walking home in the dark after a long day chasing criminals is another. Running away from an imagined evil is no way to begin a story.
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I am telling you this because you wanted to know what it’s like to tell something so beautiful everyone will cry. I am telling you because I want you to know what it is to keep everything inside of you. I am telling you.
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Can you see? Can you see into me and reach in your hand and pull me inside out, like an old shirt? Will you wear me until I unravel on your shoulders, will you cut me apart and use my skin to clean up the cola you spill on the floor when you’re drunk?
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I want you to know that I want you to know. Do you want me? To know is to know. I, you want we. We want. That is why we’re here. To want is to be is to want and I want you. Do you also? Check yes or no.
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There is a way to end every story, every song. Every criminal must be caught. Even those who cry dry their tears. I cannot tell you all I want because I want to tell you everything. There is no art because there is no mirror big enough. We wake up every day. Sometimes we sleep.
Paul read this on an old mugshot in the library. He had taken the bus into town to check out a few books on woodworking and got distracted by the True Crime section. He found this mugshot in a book titled Crooks like Us that was published in Sydney. He liked how cities were named after women, or how women were named after cities, whichever was true.
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The man in the picture’s eyes were tightly shut, as though he’d just come into the brightness of day after being dark inside for a long time. His head was tilted up and slightly to the right. He was wearing a short light tie with hash marks, and a pinstripe suit. Paul wished the photograph was in color. He was standing in front of a plain brown wall covered in fabric.
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The man’s eyes were not so tightly shut as Paul first thought. His eyebrows lifted away from the eyes, giving the man a bemused look. His mouth was slightly opened in what seemed to Paul like a grin. This was accentuated by the man’s ears, which were large. Paul wasn’t sure why the ears made the man look happier. He wondered what crime he had committed.
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Above the man’s head was written T. BEDE.22.11.28 / 203 A. THIS MAN REFUSED TO OPEN HIS EYES was written over his suit, directly below his ribcage.
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+ The moon is gone and in its place a mirror | Autocento of the breakfast table
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The moon is gone and in its place a mirror
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The moon is gone and in its place a mirror. Looking at the night sky now yields nothing but the viewer’s own face as viewed from a million miles, surrounded by the landscape he is only vaguely aware of being surrounded by. He believes that he is alone, surrounded by desert and mountain, but behind him—he now sees it—someone is sneaking up on him. He spins around fast, but no one is there on Earth. He looks back up and they are yet closer in the night sky. Again he looks over his shoulder but there is nothing, not even a desert mouse. As he looks up again he realizes it’s a cloud above him, which due to optics has looked like someone else. The cloud blocks out the moon which is now a mirror, and the viewer is completely alone.
The other side of this mountain is not the mountain. This side is honey-golden, sticky-sweet, full of phone conversations with mother. The other side is a bell, ringing in the church-steeple the day mother died.
This mountain is not a mountain. I walked to the top, but it turned and was only a shelf halfway up. I felt like an unused Bible sitting on a dusty pew.
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A hawk soars over the mountain. She is looking for home.
A dog moving sideways is sick; a man moving sideways is drunk. Thus if you want to be mindful of the movings of the universe sideways, become either drunk or sick. By doing this you remove yourself from the equation, and are able to observe, without being observed, the universe as it dances sideways drunkenly.
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Shit wait. The problem is not that by observing you are observed (although quantum mechanics may disagree1), because obviously dogs don’t know we’re observing them when we watch them through cameras in their little yard while they play and eat and poop—who poops knowingly on camera? The problem is the actual act of observing that distorts the world into what we want it to be.
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What I want to know is this: Why is this necessarily a problem? The dog is made, by mankind, to frolic and poop and sniff and growl and dig. Why cannot the man be made to observe the world incorrectly around him, and worry about it? Men have always wandered about the earth; does it not make sense that also they should wonder in their minds what makes it all work?2 In fact this is the very center of the creative being: the ability to move sideways, to dance with reality and judge it as it judges you, much like teenagers at the junior prom.
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Of course, reality doesn’t judge us back. But that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t! If you think it’s judging you, then observe in your surroundings your own insecurities. It is obvious that this way of doing things is far from vogue; usually projecting inner pain onto the outer world is classified as pathology. However, this is because it is assumed that the outer world is on its own terms, which it obviously isn’t, as far as we know. It follows that as there is no backdrop against which to judge our quirks, the quirks must not exist. Thus all is right with the world.
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Quantum mechanics, as is well known, are the most hornery and least agreeable of all mechanics. The cost to get one quantum serviced is usually at least eight times more expensive than the cost of an average automobile tune-up, for reasons not clearly known. The quantum mechanics themselves claim it’s the smallness of their work that justifies the price, but it doesn’t really look like they’re doing anything, and besides, my quantum always seems to break again within six months—maybe I’m just driving it too hard.↩
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I attempted to strike this terrible pun from the account, but Hezekiah demanded I keep it if he were to continue the relation of his prophecy-slash-advice column↩
Paul began typing on notecards. Somehow this felt right to his sensibilities. It was difficult to get the little cards into the typewriter. It was a pain to readjust the typewriter for regular paper when he wasn’t writing. He started typing everything on those little notecards: grocery lists, letters to his grandmother, even reports for work (which is what got him in trouble).
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But this was all later. For now he was writing his ideas, “notes” he now called them, something for him to combine later into something. He didn’t like to think about it. On this particular cold winter morning, he wrote
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Woke up from a dream I was famous.
+ One of the more famous people in
+ fact. I had written something
+ everyone could relate to and at
+ the same time proved my parents
+ wrong. Because I made a lot of
+ money. Or not a lot, but enough
+ and more than they thought I
+ would. It was a good day.
+ Woke up this morning and I was
+ still cold. Still Paul. Still not
+ good at furniture.
I think that I could write formal poems exclusively, or at least inclusive with all the other stuff I write I guess. Of course, I’ve already written a few, this one included, though “formal” is maybe a stretch. Is blank verse a form? What is form anyway? I picture old women counting stitches on their knitting, keeping iambs next to iambs in lines as straight and sure as arrows. But my sock is lumpy, poorly made: it’s beginning to unravel. Stresses don’t line up. Syl- lables forced to fit like McNugget molds. That cliché on the arrow? I’m aware. My prepositions too—God, where’s it stop? The answer: never. I will never stop writing poems, or hating what I write.
What did he do when he was in the woods? Where did he go? Was there always one spot, one clearing deep within the heart of them, that he would visit? Did he talk to the trees or only to himself? When he chopped down trees, did he leave them there to rot in the quiet or did he drag them out of the woods, behind his Shack, and dismember them? Did he use any for firewood, or did the pieces rot behind his Shack, forgotten? When was the last time he built any furniture? Did he get any better at building it or did he just quit at some point, let the desire to create fall behind him like a forgotten felled tree?
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A tree fell in the forest: did it make a noise? Paul typed his thoughts on cards, or wrote them in a book: did anyone read it? If anyone did, was his life changed? For the better or the worse? Did he glance at the mess in the top drawer of his Writing Desk as he cleaned the Shack out long after Paul had quit using it? Did he put tools in there or leave it empty? What did he do with the desk? Did he add it to the pile of rotting wood out back, or did he chop it up for a bonfire with friends, or a cozy fire with his wife and children, or did he take it to the dump three miles away to rot there? Are these all the options?
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Did Paul ever think about any of this? Walking in the woods one afternoon after becoming frustrated with his writing, did he sit on a stump and cry? Did he wonder whether he should have made other choices? Did he consider quitting smoking?
CONTENTS OF THE SHED
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+ - typewriter
+ - writing desk
+ - notecards (top drawer of desk)
+ - pen (fountain)
+ - inkpot (empty)
+ - wood (a lot, more out back)
+ - bare lightbulb
+ - candle
+ - wooden shelf with tools:
+ - claw hammer
+ - screwdriver
+ - prybar
+ - 2x wrench (different
+ kinds)
+ - tiller machine
+ - push lawnmower
+ - hatchet
+ - axe
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He typed the list in the typewriter and looked around some more. He wanted to make sure he didn’t miss anything. Finally it hit him and he smiled. He typed one more line, stood up, and went out of the shed.
+
- Paul Bunyon
+
He got some kerosene from under the house, poured it around the base of the shed, lit a cigarette. He smoked half of it and threw it down to start the fire.
Importance is important. But meaning is meaningful. Here we are at the crux of the matter, for both meaning and importance are also human-formed. So it would seem that nothing is important or meaningful, if importance and meaning are of themselves only products of the fallible human intellect. But here is the great secret: so is the fallibility of the human intellect a mere product of the fallible human intellect. The question here arises: Is anything real, and not a mere invention of a mistaken human mind? By real of course I mean “that which is on its own terms,” that is, without any modification on the part of mankind by observing it. But such a thing is impossible to be known, for if it be known it has certainly been observed by someone, and so it is not on its own terms but on the terms of the observer. So it cannot be known if anything exists on its own terms, for it exists on its own terms we certainly will not know anything about it.
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By this it is possible to see that nothing is knowable without the mediating factor of our mind fucking up the “raw,” the “real” world. But by this time it would seem that this chapter is far far too philosophical, not to mention pretentious, so I must try again.
“Hello Paul this is Jill Jill Noe remember me” the voice on the phone was a woman’s. He nodded into the receiver. “Hello” Jill asked again “hello?” Paul remembered that phones work by talking and said “Hello Jill.”
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“Do you remember me” she asked “we were in school together? How have you been?” “Pretty well” said Paul “I’ve been writing and making furniture.” “Oh that’s nice” said the woman’s voice tinny in the phone “Listen I ran into your mother at the Supermarket the other day and she said you need a job. You still need one?” Paul had to tell the truth. His mother was watching him out of the corner of her eye as she was playing dominoes at the kitchen table. “Yes” he said sighing “Although woodworking takes up much of my time.”
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“OK” she laughed uncomortably “I actually have something you could do for me if you think you can get away from woodworking a bit. It’s just data entry really basic stuff entry-level.” “What’s it pay” he asked. “Minimum but there is room for movement.” “OK” he said. “Start on Monday okay?” “Sure” he said “bye” and the tin voice in the phone said “Goodbye Paul see you” by the time he put it back on the hook.
+
“Who was that” asked his mother. “Jill Noe” he said. “Oh her was she calling about a job for you?” “Yes starts Monday” he said. She smiled behind her glasses reflecting dominoes.
This sat alone on a blank notecard in Paul’s typewriter. He stared at it, sipping at his too-hot coffee. This made sense to him.
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He looked at the spot on the wall where he wanted a window to be, at the rough planks above his desk as they were lit by the bare hanging lightbulb. He sipped his coffee again. It was still too hot. His Woodworking Shack was becoming full of wood that was not furniture. He feared it would never become so.
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He threw open the door to the snow and the ground below it. He reached for his axe on the wall. He reconsidered. He took a few tentative steps onto the blankness on his own. He wasn’t cold, not yet. He walked into the forest. The snow crunched under his feet and did not echo.
Of course, there is a God. Of course, there is no God. Of course, what’s really important is that these aren’t important. No, they are; but not really important. All that’s important is the relative importance of non-important things. Shit. Never mind; let’s start over.
The problem with people is this: we cannot be happy. No matter how hard or easy we try, it is not to be. It seems sometimes that, just as the dog was made for jumping in mud and sniffing out foxholes and having a good time all around, man was made for sadness, loneliness and heartache.
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Being the observant and judgmental people they are, people have for a long time tried to figure out why they aren’t happy. Some say it’s because we’re obviously doing something wrong. Some say it’s because we think too much. Some insist that it’s because other people have more stuff than we do. These people don’t have a clue any more than any of the rest of us. At least I don’t think they do, and that’s good enough for me.1 I think that the reason why people are unhappy (and this is a personal opinion) is that they realize on some level (for some it’s a pretty shallow level, others it’s way down there next to their love for women’s stockings2) that there is no background to put themselves against, no “big picture” to get painted into. This makes sense, because on one level, the level of everyday life, the level of observation, there is always a background—look in a pair of binoculars sometime. But on another level, that of … shit, wait. There are no other levels.3
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What’s more, people try to explain how to get happy again (although it’s doubtful they were ever happy in the first place—people are very good at fooling). Some say standing or [sitting in a building][] with a lot of other unhappy people helps. Some say that you can’t stop there; you also need to sing with those other unhappy people about how unhappy you are, and how you wish someone would come along and help you out, I guess by giving you money or something. I say all you really need to be happy is a good stiff drink.4
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In any case, people have for some reason or another, and to some end or another, always been unhappy. And people have always tried to figure out ways to be less unhappy—one of the most important things to people everywhere is called “the pursuit of happiness.” I think that calling it a pursuit makes people feel more like dogs, who are the most happy beings most people can think of. By pursuing happiness, they’re like a dog pursuing a possum or a bone on a fishing rod: two activities that sound like a lot of fun to most people. I think most people wish they were dogs.
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This seems to be an attempt on Hezzy’s part to set an example for mankind. It should be noted that he is an alcoholic, and not in any shape to be an example to anyone.↩
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It is thought that only the leg coverings of the female sex are here referenced↩
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You have hereby found the super special secret cheat code room. Yes, this is just like Super Mario Brothers—you can skip right to the end. Go and face the final boss already!↩
Nothing matters; everything is sacred. Everything matters; nothing is sacred.1 This is the only way we can move forward: by moving sideways. Life is a great big rugby game, and the entire field has to be run for a goal. The fact that the beginning two verses of this chapter have the same number of characters proves that they are a tautological pair, that is, they complete each other. Sometimes life seems like a dog wagging its tail, smiling up at you and wanting you to love it, just wanting that, simple simple love, oblivious to the fact that it just ran through your immaculately groomed flower garden and tracked all the mud in onto your freshly steamed carpet. Life is not life in a suburb. There are no rosebushes, groomed never. There is no carpet, steamed at any time. The dog looks at you wanting you to love it. It wants to know that you know that it’s there. It wants to be observed.[^2]
When he finally got back to work he was surprised they threw him a party. WELCOME BACK PAUL! was written on a big banner across the back wall. Someone had ordered a confectioner’s-sugar cake with frosting flowers on the corners. It said the same thing as the banner. “Welcome back, Paul” said Jill as he was at the punch bowl. The cup was on the table as he ladled punch in with his right hand. His left was wrapped in gauze.
+
“Let me help you with that” said Jill. Paul had a strange feeling this had happened before. She took the ladle and their hands touched. She picked the cup up in her right hand and used her left to lift the spoon. “You know” she said “we were worried about you. When Jerry heard about your hand he said ‘There goes one of our best data entry men.’” “I still can’t really move my left hand” said Paul. “That’s alright you can take your time with the entry.” “I’m sorry.”
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“Sorry for what” she looked at his eyes. He imagined her seeing fisheye versions of herself in them. “I don’t know” he said because it was true. “It’s alright anyway” she said and placed the full punch cup in his right hand.
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+ The purpose of dogs | Autocento of the breakfast table
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The purpose of dogs
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+
+
Okay, so as we said in the Prelude, there either is or isn’t a God. This has been one of the main past times of humanity, ever since … since the first man (or woman) climbed out of whatever slime or swamp he thumbed his way out of. What humanity has failed to realize is that an incredibly plausible third, and heretofore unknown, hypothesis also exists: There is a dog.
+
In fact, there are many dogs, and not only that. There are also many types of dogs; these are called breeds, and each breed was created by man in order to fulfill some use that man thought he needed. Some dogs are for chasing birds, and some are for chasing badgers. Some are for laying in your lap and being petted all day. Some dogs don’t seem to be really for anything, besides being fucking stupid and chewing up your one-of-a-kind collectible individually-numbered King Kong figurine from the Peter Jackson film. But the important thing is, (and here we go with important things again) all dogs have been bred by people for performing some certain function that we think is important.
+
Note: Just because we think it’s important doesn’t mean it is important. But it might as well be, because what we as humans think is important is important. But be careful! just because something’s important doesn’t mean it means anything, or that it actually makes anything happen. Even though just because something makes something else happen doesn’t mean it’s important. Shit. Let me start again.
“Do you have to say your thoughts out loud for them to mean anything” Paul asked Jill on his first coffee break at work. It was in the city and his mother told him she wouldn’t drive him so he’d had to take the bus. Number 3 he thought it was – he couldn’t quite remember. Jill said “Sorry what?” Paul realized that she hadn’t really noticed him there in the break room as he was hunched behind the refrigerator a little and she was busy pouring coffee and exactly two tablespoons of both milk and sugar into her mug before she put the coffee in. He decided to repeat the question.
+
“How do you think” he asked. “Like everyone else I guess” she said “I have a thought and if it’s important I write it down.” “Do you have to say them out loud for them to make sense?” “Are you asking if I talk to myself?” A pause. “I guess so” he said looking down. He had a feeling this was a bad thing. “Sometimes” she said and walked out of the break room. She didn’t understand the importance of his question. She popped her head back in a moment later and his heart leaped in his chest.
+
“How’s your first day going so far” she asked. “Can you understand everything okay?” “Yes” he said “you were right it’s pretty basic.” “Good” she said. “Paul?” “Yes.” “Do you have to say all of your thoughts out loud to remember them?” He shook his head.
+
Only all of the time, Paul thought to himself but didn’t speak.
“Paul, you can’t turn in your reports on four-by-six notecards” Jill told him after he handed her his reports, typed carefully on twelve four-by-six notecards. He had spent the weekend
+
+
going to the Office Supply Store to buy notecards and typewriter ribbon (he found it surprisingly easily) after his first payday
+
replacing the ribbon in his typewriter (this took approximately half an hour, because he had to figure it all out on his own)
+
opening the package of notecards (this took approximately four seconds, although he still had to figure out how to do it on his own. It was just easier)
+
carefully typing the reports he’d handwritten on letter paper onto the notecards (he made many mistakes and threw away many notecards, though later he used them for kindling)
+
+
so understandably he was upset. He told Jill all the work he’d gone to to type those notecard reports for her, for the company. She shook her head. “Paul, you don’t have to do all that work at home. Just type it up on the computers here, that’s all you need to do. Thanks for the work though.” He nodded as she threw the notecards into the trashcan and left his cubicle.
When Ronald McDonald takes off his striped shirt, his coveralls, his painted face: when he no longer looks like anyone or anything special, sitting next to women
+
in bars or standing in the aisle at the grocery, is he no longer Ronald? Is he no longer happy to kick a soccer ball around with the kids in the park,
+
is he suddenly unable to enjoy the french fries he gets for his fifty percent off? I’d like to think that he takes Ronald off like a shirt, hangs him
+
in a closet where he breathes darkly in the musk. I’d like to believe that we are able to slough off selves like old skin and still retain some base self.
+
Of course we all know this is not what happens. The Ronald leering at women drunkenly is the same who the next day kicks at a ball the size of a head.
+
He is the same that hugs his children at night, who has sex with his wife on the weekends when they’re not so tired to make it work, who smiles holding
+
a basket of fries in front of a field. He cannot take off the facepaint or the yellow gloves. They are stuck to him like so many feathers with the tar
+
of his everyday associations. His plight is that of everyone’s—we are what we do who we are.
I lost my hands & knit replacement ones from spiders’ threads, stronger than steel but soft as lambs’ wool. Catching as they do on nails & your collarbone, you don’t seem to like their rough warm presence on your cheek or thigh. I’ve asked you if you minded, you’ve said no (your face a table laid with burnt meat, bread so stale it could break a hand). Remember your senile mother’s face above that table? I’d say she got the meaning of that look. You’d rather not be touched by these rough gloves, the only way I have to knit a love against whatever winters we may enter like a silkworm in a spider’s blackened maw.
He chopped down a sapling pine tree and looked at his watch. From first chop to fall it had taken him eight minutes and something like twenty seconds. Maybe a little change. He leaned against another tree and fished in his pocket for a cigarette. He lifted it out of its box and fished in his other pocket for his lighter, failing to find it. He searched his other pockets. He came to the realization that he had forgotten it in his Shack (in confusion over his True Vocation, he’d resorted to calling it simply the Shack until he could figure it out). He sighed and put his hands in his pockets.
+
“I wonder if trees are protective of their young” he said to himself, then wondered if why he had to think his thoughts out loud, then remembered he always did this, then remembered his conversation with Jill. He hoped she didn’t. He hoped that conversation was like the tree that fell in the forest with no one around. “I wonder if a thought said out loud isn’t heard by anyone, if it was made. I think maybe this is what Literature (big L) is all about, if it’s trying to make a connection because no idea matters unless it’s connected to something else, or to someone else. Maybe no wood matters unless it’s bound to another by upholstery nails. If ‘the devil is in the details,’ as they say (who are ‘they’ anyway?), the details are the connections? That doesn’t make sense. Details are details. Connections are connections.
+
“Still, a neuron by itself means nothing. Put them all together though and connect them. You’ve got a brain.”
The self is a serengeti a wide grassland with baobab trees reaching their roots deep into earth like a child into a clay pot A wind blows there or seems to blow if he holds it up to his ear the air shifts like stones in a stream uncovering a crawfish it finds another hiding place watching you Its eyes are blacker than wind on the serengeti they are the eyes of a predator they are coming toward you or receding a storm cloud builds on the horizon Are you running toward the rain or away from it Do you stand still and crouch hoping for silence
“What do you do all day in that shed out back” his mother asked one night while they ate dinner in front of the TV. “Write” he answered. “Write what” she asked in that way that means he’d better not say I don’t know. “I don’t know” he said.
+
“Goddammit Paul” his mother said. “You’re wasting your life out in that shed. You need to go out and get—” “I chop down trees too” he said. “I make furniture out of them.” His mother’s face did a Hitchcock zoom as she considered this new information. “Is it any good” she asked, eyes narrowed.
+
“It’s getting there” he answered. “I’m getting better every day.” “When is it going to be there” she asked. “When are you going to sell this furniture of yours?” “It’ll be a while” he answered.
+
“Then you’d better get a job until then” she said.
He builds a ship as if it were the last thing holding him together, as if, when he stops, his body will fall onto the plate-glass water and shatter into sand. To keep his morale up he whistles and sings, but the wind whistles louder and taunts him: Your ship will build itself if you throw yourself into the sea; time has a way of growing your beard for you. Soon, you’ll find yourself on a rocking chair on some porch made from your ship’s timbers. The window behind you is made from a sail, thick canvas, and no one inside will hear your calling for milk or a chamberpot. Your children will have all sailed to the New World and left you. But he tries not to listen, continues to hammer nail after nail into timber after timber, but the wind finally blows him into the growling ocean and the ship falls apart on its own.
I don’t care if they burn he wrote on his last blank notecard. He’d have to go to the Office Supply Store tomorrow after work.
+
He looked at what he’d written. He’d been thinking about this for a while, felt the frustration build slowly like a thundercloud in the back of his mind. He thought he should write something else on the card, but everything he thought of seemed too confessional or too real compromising. He didn’t want anyone, not even the notecards, to know what he was thinking. He decided to try for more of an interview with the paper.
+
Why? asked the notecard. Because there is nothing important on any of them he wrote back. What do you mean? You have some good stuff in that top drawer there. He looked in the top drawer. It was stuffed full of notecards in no organization. He could see bits and pieces of thoughts like leaves crunched underfoot in autumn. It will take so much organization he wrote.
+
Why is organization important? Remember the trees, how they formed rows without trying. No matter how the ideas fall, they make something. The snow does that too he wrote. It doesn’t try to make anything but it does.
+
No the snow is different the notecard was annoyed. The snow is a blank canvas that humans build into shapes or doppelgangers. It makes nothing on its own.
My body is attached to your body by a thin spittle of thought. When you turn away from me, my thought is broken and forms anew with something else. Ideas are drool. Beauty has been slobbered over far too long. God is a tidal wave of bodily fluid. Even the flea has some vestigial wetness. We live in a world fleshy and dark, and moist as a nostril. Is conciousness only a watery-eyed romantic, crying softly into his shirt-sleeve? Is not reason a square-jawed businessman with a briefcase full of memory? I want to kiss the world to make it mine. I want to become a Judas to reality, betray it with the wetness of emotion.
He is so full in himself: how far down the branch to run, how long to jump, when to grab the air and catch in it and turn, and land on branch so gracefully it’s like dying, alone and warm in a bed next to a summer window and the birds singing. And on that branch there is the squirrel dancing among the branches and you think What if he fell? but he won’t because he’s a squirrel and that’s what they do, dance and never fall. It was erased long ago from the squirrel, even the possibility of falling was erased from his being by the slow inexorable evolution of squirrels, that is why all squirrels are so full in themselves, full in who they are.
+
+
+
+
+
+
diff --git a/src/TODO.txt b/src/TODO.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0030650
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/TODO.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,7 @@
+TODO:
+-----
+
+* add in prose stuff from Elegies
+* remove numbers from filenames & links
+* add genre to YAML metadata blocks
+
diff --git a/src/and.txt b/src/and.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..645f0c2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/and.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,46 @@
+---
+title: And
+genre: verse
+
+epigraph:
+ content: |
+ "What is your favorite word?"
+ "And. It is so hopeful."
+ attrib: Margaret Atwood
+ link: 'http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2011/oct/28/margaret-atwood-q-a'
+
+project:
+ title: Elegies for alternate selves
+ css: elegies
+ order: 3
+ next:
+ - title: Words and meaning
+ link: words-meaning
+ prev:
+ - title: How to read this
+ link: howtoread
+...
+
+And you were there in the start of it all \
+and you folded your hands like little doves \
+that would fly away like an afterthought \
+and you turned to me the window light on your face \
+and you asked me something that I did not recognize \
+like a great throng of people who are not you \
+and I asked are we in a [church][] \
+and you answered with the look on your face \
+of someone [grieving something gone][] for years \
+ but that they had been reminded of \
+by a catch in the light or in someone's voice \
+and I think maybe it could have been mine \
+and I looked away thickly my head was in jelly \
+and I didn't get an answer from you but I got one
+
+I looked at the man in front of us with glasses \
+he was speaking and holding a book \
+and I didn't understand him he was far away \
+and I could tell I was missing something important \
+and you nodded to yourself at something he said
+
+[church]: boar.html
+[grieving something gone]: roughgloves.html
diff --git a/src/angeltoabraham.txt b/src/angeltoabraham.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5fd7ad1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/angeltoabraham.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,39 @@
+---
+title: The angel to Abraham
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+ title: Elegies for alternate selves
+ css: elegies
+ order: 10
+ prev:
+ title: Dead man
+ link: deadman
+ next:
+ title: Feeding the raven
+ link: feedingtheraven
+...
+
+Abraham, Abraham, you are old and cannot hear: \
+what if you miss my small voice amongst the creaking \
+of your own grief, kill your son unknowing \
+of what he will be, and commit Israel to nothing?
+
+Abraham, you must know or hope that [God][] \
+will not allow your son to die; you must know \
+that this is a test, but then why \
+are you so bent on Isaac's destruction? \
+Look at your eyes; there is more than fear \
+there. I see in your eyes desperation, \
+a manic passion to do right by your God \
+whom you are not able to see or know.
+
+Am I too late? I [will try][] to stay \
+your old hands, the knife clenched \
+within them, intent on ending life.
+
+Will you hear my small voice amongst the creaking, \
+or will it be the chance bleating of a passing ram?
+
+[God]: boar.html
+[will try]: i-am.html
diff --git a/src/apollo11.txt b/src/apollo11.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a72aaab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/apollo11.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,44 @@
+---
+title: On seeing the panorama of the Apollo 11 landing site
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+ title: Elegies for alternate selves
+ css: elegies
+ order: 5
+ next:
+ title: Ars poetica
+ link: arspoetica
+ prev:
+ title: And
+ link: and
+...
+
+So it's the [fucking moon][]. Big deal. As if \
+you haven't seen it before, hanging in the sky \
+like a piece of [rotten meat][] nailed to the wall,
+
+a maudlin love letter (the i's dotted with [hearts][]) \
+tacked to the sky's door like ninety-eight theses. \
+Don't stare at it like it means anything.
+
+Don't give it the chance to collect meaning \
+from your hand like an old pigeon. Don't dare ascribe \
+it a will, or call it fickle, or think it has any say
+
+in your affairs. It's separated from your life \
+by three hundred eighty-four thousand miles of space, \
+the same distance you stepped away from time that night
+
+you said your love was broken, a crippled gyroscope \
+knocking in the dark. It was then that time fell apart, \
+had a nervous breakdown and started following you
+
+everywhere, moonfaced, always asking where you're going. \
+You keep trying to get away from it but it nuzzles closer \
+and sings you songs that sound like the cooing of a dove \
+that will only escape again into an empty sky at dawn.
+
+[fucking moon]: deathstrumpet.html
+[rotten meat]: roughgloves.html
+[hearts]: proverbs.html
diff --git a/src/arspoetica.txt b/src/arspoetica.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3014498
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/arspoetica.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,52 @@
+---
+title: Ars poetica
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+ title: Elegies for alternate selves
+ css: elegies
+ order: 6
+ prev:
+ title: On seeing the panorama of the Apollo 11 landing site
+ link: apollo11
+ next:
+ title: The ocean overflows with camels
+ link: theoceanoverflowswithcamels
+...
+
+What is poetry? [Poetry is.][is] Inasmuch as life is, so is poetry. Here is
+the problem: life is very big and complex. Human beings are neither. We
+are small, simple beings that don’t want to know all of the myriad
+interactions happening all around us, within us, as a part of us, all
+the hours of every day. We much prefer knowing only that which is just
+in front of our faces, staring us back with a look of utter contempt.
+This is why many people are depressed.
+
+Poetry is an attempt made by some to open up our field of view, to maybe
+check on something else that isn’t staring us in the face so
+contemptibly. Maybe something else is smiling at us, we think. So we
+write poetry to force ourselves to look away from the [mirror][] of our
+existence to see something else.
+
+This is generally painful. To make it less painful, poetry compresses
+reality a lot to make it more consumable. It takes life, that seawater,
+and boils it down and boils it down until only the salt remains, the
+important parts that we can focus on and make some sense of the
+senselessness of life. Poetry is life bouillon, and to thoroughly enjoy
+a poem we must put that bouillon back into the seawater of life and make
+a delicious soup out of it. To make this soup, to decompress the poem
+into an emotion or life, requires a lot of brainpower. A good reader
+will have this brainpower. A good poem will not require it.
+
+What this means is: a poem should be self-extracting. It should be a
+rare vanilla in the bottle, waiting only for someone to open it and
+sniff it and suddenly there they are, in the orchid that vanilla came
+from, in the tropical land where it grew next to its brothers and sister
+vanilla plants. They feel the pain of having their children taken from
+them. A good poem leaves a feeling of loss and of intense beauty. The
+reader does nothing to achieve this—they are merely the receptacle of
+the feeling that the poem forces onto them. In a way, poetry is a crime.
+But it is the most beautiful crime on this crime-ridden earth.
+
+[is]: words-meaning.html
+[mirror]: moongone.html
diff --git a/src/art.txt b/src/art.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c439598
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/art.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,30 @@
+---
+title: Art
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+ title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+ css: paul
+ order: 1
+ next:
+ - title: Hymnal
+ link: hymnal
+ - title: Axe
+ link: axe
+...
+
+Paul was writing in his diary about art.
+
+_This is my brain_ he wrote. _This is my brain and all it contains. 'I
+contain multitudes' said Legion. I think it was Legion._ The big heading he
+had written at the top of the page (_ART_ it read, but only when looking at it
+from his point of view) sat cold and alone, neglected in the white space
+surrounding it. He noticed this presently (but not after he had written a
+little more about multitudes), paused, frowned, and began to write again.
+
+_ART stands alone at the top of a blank page_ he wrote. _It follows ~~itself
+in circles~~ its own footprints in a circle around its own name. It leads
+nowhere but is present everywhere. ~~It contains~~ It contains multitudes.
+Every painting ever made is a painting of every other painting. Every song is
+a remix, a cover version._ He crossed out the part about songs for getting
+off topic. He made a note to himself in the margin---_Music is not ART._
diff --git a/src/axe.txt b/src/axe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2c7454b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/axe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,37 @@
+---
+title: Axe
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+ title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+ css: paul
+ order: 5
+ next:
+ - title: Leaf
+ link: leaf
+ - title: Building
+ link: building
+ previous:
+ - title: Dream
+ link: dream
+ - title: Art
+ link: art
+...
+
+Paul took his axe and went out into the woods to chop trees. Or rather he
+went into the trees to chop wood. He wasn't sure. Either way it helped him
+think. Last time he'd gone out, he'd had an idea for a shoe-insert company he
+could start called "Paul's Bunyons." He chuckled to himself as he shouldered
+his axe and went into the forest.
+
+Deep into the woods he admired the organization of the trees. "They grow
+wherever they fall" he said "but still none is too close to another." He
+sounded like Solomon to himself. He imagined he had a beard.
+
+He walked for a long time in the shadows of the forest, in its coolness. It
+sounded like snow had fallen but it was still October. The first time the
+trees seemed to radiate out from him in straight lines he stopped and turned
+around four times. After he walked on he noticed it happened fairly often.
+
+Still, after he felled his first tree that day he realized they grew from the
+epicenter of his axe. He paused in the small dark sound of the forest quiet.
diff --git a/src/boar.txt b/src/boar.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..049e0ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/boar.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,39 @@
+---
+title: The boar
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+ title: Elegies for alternate selves
+ css: elegies
+ order: 8
+ prev:
+ title: The ocean overflows with camels
+ link: theoceanoverflowswithcamels
+ next:
+ title: Dead man
+ link: deadman
+...
+
+Now the ticking clocks scare me. \
+The [empty][] rooms, clock towers, belfries; \
+I am terrified by them all.
+
+I really used to enjoy going to church, \
+singing in the choir, listening to the sermon. \
+Now the chairs squeal like dying pigs---
+
+It was the boar that did it. \
+[Fifteen feet][] from me that night \
+in the grass, rooting for God \
+knows what, finding me instead.
+
+I ran, not knowing where or how, \
+not looking for his pursuit of me. \
+I ran to God's front door, found \
+it locked, found the [house][] empty
+
+with a note saying, "Condemned."
+
+[empty]: mountain.html
+[Fifteen feet]: telemarketer.html
+[house]: i-am.html
diff --git a/src/building.txt b/src/building.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ceb244
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/building.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,42 @@
+---
+title: Building
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+ title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+ css: paul
+ order: 28
+ next:
+ - title: Yellow
+ link: yellow
+ - title: Cereal
+ link: cereal
+ previous:
+ - title: Stagnant
+ link: stagnant
+ - title: Axe
+ link: axe
+...
+
+_ART and CRAFT are only the inside and outside of the same building. The
+ceiling is_---here he put his eraser to his bottom lip, thinking. He crossed
+out _~~The ceiling is.~~_ _The floor is reality and the ceiling is
+~~aspiration~~ ~~desire~~ that which is desired. CRAFT is building a chair
+from wood. ART is using the wood as a substrate for an emotional message to a
+future person, the READER / VIEWER._
+
+_The important thing is they are both made of wood. The important thing is
+they were both, at one point, alive natural things that grew and changed and
+pushed their way out of the dirt into the air. They formed buildings out of
+the air. They didn't even try._
+
+_What separates us from them, the trees? We have to try. We must labor to
+create our ART, our buildings of air. We lay them out brick by brick, we
+build them up by disintegrating trees and forming them again into what they
+were before. Why must we do this? are there any advantages to this human
+method?_
+
+_Our advantage is memory. Our advantage is the reaching-out over space and
+time to others with our words, our ART. Our buildings last for generations,
+and after they are demolished they are written about, photographs are taken,
+we **remember**. The act of memory is our only ART._
diff --git a/src/cereal.txt b/src/cereal.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8a2ba8e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/cereal.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,43 @@
+---
+title: Cereal
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+ title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+ css: paul
+ order: 21
+ next:
+ - title: Man
+ link: man
+ - title: Dream
+ link: dream
+ previous:
+ - title: Sapling
+ link: sapling
+ - title: Building
+ link: building
+...
+
+He woke up after eleven and didn't go outside all day, not even to his Writing
+Shack. What did he do?
+
+He watched late morning cartoons meant for children too young to go to school.
+He ate bowls of cereal. He watched his mother play dominoes. He played
+dominoes with her for a little while until she was winning by such a margin it
+wasn't fun for either of them. He went down to the basement to do his
+laundry. He pulled the chain for the light and it turned on like magic.
+"Electricity is like magic" he said to himself. He thought he would like to
+write that down but his Implements were in the Shack. He'd already built up
+so much momentum inside.
+
+Inertia? he thought. "What's the difference between inertia and momentum" he
+asked himself as he hefted dirty clothes into the washer. "Maybe inertia is
+the momentum of not moving" he thought as he measured and poured the blue
+detergent into the drum. "Momentum is the inertia of moving forward through
+time" as he selected WARM-COLD on the dial and pulled it out to start the
+machine. "What do you think is the difference between inertia and momentum"
+he asked his mother when he opened the door at the top of the stairs.
+
+"When you switch over your laundry could you bring up my underwear from the
+dryer" she asked not looking up from her dominoes. A thread of smoke curled
+from her cigarette and spread out on the ceiling.
diff --git a/src/deadman.txt b/src/deadman.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ef673e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/deadman.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,37 @@
+---
+title: Dead man
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+ title: Elegies for alternate selves
+ css: elegies
+ order: 9
+ prev:
+ title: The boar
+ link: boar
+ next:
+ title: The angel to Abraham
+ link: angeltoabraham
+...
+
+A dead man finds his way into our [hearts][] \
+simply by opening the door and walking in. \
+He pours himself a drink, speaks aimlessly \
+about hunting or some bats he saw \
+on the way over, wheeling around each other. \
+Look how [they spin][], he says, it's like the \
+ripples atoms make as they hurl past each other \
+in the space between their bodies. \
+We mention the eels at the aquarium, how \
+their bodies [knot while mating][]. The dead man \
+was a boyscout once, and tied a lot of knots. \
+His favorite was the one with the rabbit \
+and the hole, and the rabbit going in and out \
+and around the tree. The dead man liked it \
+because he liked to pretend that the rabbit \
+was running from a fox, and the rabbit \
+always ended up safe, back in his hole.
+
+[hearts]: words-meaning.html
+[they spin]: moongone.html
+[knot while mating]: spittle.html
diff --git a/src/deathstrumpet.txt b/src/deathstrumpet.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f5ad1ed
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/deathstrumpet.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,47 @@
+---
+title: "Death's trumpet"
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+ title: Elegies for alternate selves
+ css: elegies
+ order: 28
+ prev:
+ title: 'To Daniel: an elaboration'
+ link: todaniel
+
+epigraph:
+ content: |
+ So Death plays his little [fucking](apollo11.html) trumpet.
+ So what, says the boy.
+ attrib: Larry Levis
+...
+
+He didn't have any polish so he spit-shined the whole thing, \
+top to bottom. It gleamed like maybe a tomato on the vine \
+begging to be picked and thrown on some caprese. Death loved caprese.
+
+He stood up and put the horn to his lips, imagining \
+it was a woman he loved. He blushed as he realized \
+it was a terrible metaphor. \
+He practiced for six hours a day---what else to do?
+
+Death looks at [himself in the mirror][moongone] as he plays. \
+The trumpet is suspended in midair. Damn vampire rules. \
+Death is always worried he might have missed a spot shaving \
+but he'll never know unless a stranger is polite enough. \
+Not that he ever goes out or meets anyone.
+
+He wakes up late these days. Stays in bed later. \
+He thinks he might be depressed. The caprese has gotten soggy \
+since he made it, maybe three days ago or maybe just two. \
+The sun streams through his kitchen blinds like smoke. \
+He decides to go to the arcade. When he gets there,
+
+there's only a [little boy][] with dead eyes. So far so good. \
+He's playing a first-person shooter. Death walks past him \
+and watches out of the corner of his eye. The kid's good. \
+Death wants to congratulate him. His trumpet is in his hand.
+
+[moongone]: moongone.html
+[little boy]: angeltoabraham.html
diff --git a/src/dream.txt b/src/dream.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b933977
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/dream.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,43 @@
+---
+title: Dream
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+ title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+ css: paul
+ order: 4
+ next:
+ - title: Axe
+ link: axe
+ - title: Early
+ link: early
+ previous:
+ - title: Underwear
+ link: underwear
+ - title: Cereal
+ link: cereal
+...
+
+It had gotten cold. He went to lay down in bed with a pad and paper. He
+began to write. Although he hadn't tried it much in bed before, he liked it
+mostly. His arm got tired journeying across the page like a series of
+switchbacks down the wall of the Grand Canyon. He wrote this down in the
+margin, for later:
+
+```hand
+Arm journeying across \
+the pg. like a \
+series of switch-
+backs down the wall \
+of the Grand Canyon \
+```
+
+His arm began to pain him. He adjusted his position in the bed. It didn't
+help much with the pain. It still hurt as he wrote. He began to be
+distracted by his mother's music playing in the next room.
+
+"Could you turn that down please" he hollered across the wall to his mother.
+She made no reply (music too loud). He gave his arm a break to look at what
+he'd written. He couldn't make heads or tails of it. It looked like Arabic.
+
+He woke up gasping in a sweat.
diff --git a/src/early.txt b/src/early.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..04ab997
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/early.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,42 @@
+---
+title: Early
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+ title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+ css: paul
+ order: 35
+ next:
+ - title: Toothpaste
+ link: toothpaste
+ - title: Father
+ link: father
+ previous:
+ - title: Stump
+ link: stump
+ - title: Dream
+ link: dream
+...
+
+_YOU CANNOT DISCOVER ART ART MUST BE CREATED_ he sat on the couch at home
+while his mother watched TV and smoked. Dinner had been chicken and peas with
+milk and afterward Paul and his mother sat on opposite ends of the couch. At
+intervals she would look sideways at Paul writing. He pretended not to notice.
+
+_ART = ARTIFICE_ he wrote. _ARTIFICE MEANS UNNATURAL. ARTIFICE MEANS BUILT.
+TO BUILD MEANS TO FIND A PATTERN & FIND A PATTERN IS WHAT WE ARE GOOD AT._ He
+thought about this while someone else won a car.
+
+"Do you think humans are good at finding patterns because we are hunters" he
+asked his mother. She looked sideways at him and said "Sure Paul." "Early on
+in our evolution we were hunters right? And to hunt we had to see the
+patterns in seemingly random events, like where the gazelle went each year"
+"Paul I'm trying to watch TV. If you're going to write this stuff go do it in
+your room you're distracting." Paul got up and went to his room and lay down
+on his bed.
+
+"If the gazelle went to the same place every year" he thought "did they know
+the pattern too? Or was it random for them, did they think each year 'This
+seems like a good spot let's graze here' without knowing?"
+
+He wrote _PATTERN = MEMORY_ in his notebook.
diff --git a/src/elegyforanalternateself.txt b/src/elegyforanalternateself.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b52c2c4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/elegyforanalternateself.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,26 @@
+---
+title: Elegy for an alternate self
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+ title: Autocento of the breakfast table
+ css: autocento
+...
+
+Say there are no words. Say that we are conjoined \
+from birth, or better still, say we are myself. \
+---But I still talk to myself, I build my world \
+through language, so if we say there are no words \
+this is not enough. Say we are instead some animal, \
+or better yet, a plant, or a flagellum motoring \
+aimlessly around. (Say that humans are the only things \
+that reason. Say that we're the only things that worry.)
+
+Say that I am separate. To say there's everything else \
+and then there's me is wrong. Each thing is separate: \
+there is no whole in the world. Say this is both good \
+and bad, or rather, say there is no good or bad but only \
+being, more and more of it always added, none taken out \
+though it can be forgotten. Say that forgetting \
+is a function of our remembering. (Say that humans only \
+worry about separation. Say that only humans feel it.)
diff --git a/src/epigraph.txt b/src/epigraph.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1adac49
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/epigraph.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,34 @@
+---
+title: epigraph
+subtitle: An epigraph
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+ title: Elegies for alternate selves
+ css: elegies
+ order: 1
+ next:
+ title: How to read this
+ link: howtoreadthis
+ prev:
+ title: Death's Trumpet
+ link: deathstrumpet
+...
+
+I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story.
+From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future
+beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and
+another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and
+another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and
+Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and
+Attila and a pack of [other lovers][] and queer names and offbeat professions,
+and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these
+figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in
+the crotch of this fig tree, starving to [death][], just because I couldn't
+make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one
+of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there,
+unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one,
+they plopped to the ground at my feet.
+
+[other lovers]: spittle.html
+[death]: deathstrumpet.html
diff --git a/src/father.txt b/src/father.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..693a61f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/father.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,39 @@
+---
+title: Father
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+ title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+ css: paul
+ order: 37
+ next:
+ - title: Paul
+ link: paul
+ - title: Fire
+ link: fire
+ previous:
+ - title: Toothpaste
+ link: toothpaste
+ - title: Early
+ link: early
+...
+
+"Is man the natural thing that makes unnatural things" he thought to himself
+as he looked out the kitchen window at the shed. He wondered who built the
+shed for the first time since he'd been going out there. "Mom who built the
+shed out back" he asked. "That was your father" she said.
+
+His father. Paul had never met him. His mother had said when he was a kid
+that his father was caught by a riptide while swimming in the ocean. He
+hadn't noticed what was happening until the land was a thin line on the
+horizon. He became exhausted swimming back and drowned. His body was found a
+week later by the coroner's estimate. Paul never really believed this story
+because his mother's face was sad in the wrong way when she told it.
+
+She said he looked like his father but she also said all men look alike. Paul
+realized he'd been standing at the kitchen window for a long time looking out
+at the shed without realizing it. He went out to take an inventory of
+everything inside.
+
+"Where you going" asked his mother. "To the shed. I'll be back in a bit" he
+said.
diff --git a/src/feedingtheraven.txt b/src/feedingtheraven.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ec47846
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/feedingtheraven.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,49 @@
+---
+title: Feeding the raven
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+ title: Elegies for alternate selves
+ css: elegies
+ order: 11
+ prev:
+ title: The angel to Abraham
+ link: angeltoabraham
+ next:
+ title: On formal poetry
+ link: onformalpoetry
+...
+
+You never can tell just when Charlie Sheen will enter your life. For me,
+it was last Thursday. I was reading some translation of a Japanese
+translation of "The Raven" in which the Poe and the raven become
+friends. At one point the raven gets very sick and Poe feeds him at his
+bedside and nurses him back to health. The story was very heartwarming
+and sad at the same time and my tears were welling up when suddenly I
+heard a knock on my door.
+
+I shuffled over, sniffling but managing to keep my cheeks dry to open
+it. Of course Charlie was beaming on the other side, with a bag of
+flowers and a grin like a [dog][]'s. He bounded in the room without saying
+hello and threw the flowers in the sink, opened the refrigerator and
+started poking around. I said "It's nice to see you too" and went to my
+room to get a camera, as well as a notebook for him to sign.
+
+When I came back he was on the floor, hunched and groaning. I looked on
+the table to see a month-old half-gallon of milk---now cottage
+cheese---half-empty and dripping. The remnants were on his mouth, and at
+once I saw my chance to become Poe in this [translation of a translation][]
+of a translation. I knelt next to Charlie, cradled his head in my lap.
+He looked up at me with a stare full of terror. I returned it levelly,
+making cooing noises at him until he calmed down.
+
+When he was calm he excused himself to be sick on my toilet. He wouldn't
+let me follow but said he would sign whatever I liked when he got back.
+After half an hour passed and all I'd had for company was the ticking of
+the [clock][], I went to the bathroom door. I knocked carefully---once, then
+twice---to no beaming face, no flowers. I opened the door. There was shit
+on the floor and the window was open. There was a breeze blowing.
+
+[dog]: purpose-dogs.html
+[translation of a translation]: todaniel.html
+[clock]: boar.html
diff --git a/src/fire.txt b/src/fire.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ca2ce7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/fire.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
+---
+title: Fire
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+ title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+ css: paul
+ order: 39
+ next:
+ - title: Hands
+ link: hands
+ previous:
+ - title: Paul
+ link: paul
+ - title: Father
+ link: father
+...
+
+His mother ran out of the house in her nightgown. "What the hell do you think
+you're doing" she hollered as Paul watched the shed. "I'm burning the shed
+down" he said smiling "isn't it warm?" "It's warm enough out here without
+that burning down" she said "go get the hose and put this thing out." "But
+Mom" "Do it" she said in the tone of voice that meant Do it now. He went
+around the side of the house screwed the nozzle on grabbed the end of the hose
+pulled it around the house and waited for water to come out the end. When it
+did it was not in a very strong stream. "I don't think this is going to work"
+Paul said to his mother. "God damn it I have to call the Fire Department" she
+said and went inside the house. The shed continued in its burning.
+
+After the Fire Department put out the fire one of the men said "Your mother
+says you set this building on fire. You know Arson is a major offense." "I
+set it on fire" Paul said. "Why?" "Because ART wants to be random, it wants
+to be natural, but it isn't. Humans create ART because we can't help but see
+patterns in randomness. But we feel guilty about it." The man nodded to
+another man in a blue uniform. "We want the ART to feel natural, to feel
+random, but we can't stop seeing the patterns" as the man in blue walked over
+and put a hand on Paul's shoulder "ART is unnatural by its very nature. I
+took my ART and gave it back to nature" as the man led him over to a black and
+white car and put him inside. He was saying something about Paul's right.
+"No it's my left that was hurt" said Paul "but it's all better now."
diff --git a/src/hands.txt b/src/hands.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3d65193
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/hands.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,44 @@
+---
+title: Hands
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+ title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+ css: paul
+ order: 10
+ next:
+ - title: Toilet
+ link: toilet
+ - title: Hardware
+ link: hardware
+ previous:
+ - title: Shed
+ link: shed
+ - title: Fire
+ link: fire
+...
+
+He looked down at his hands idly while he was typing. They were dry and
+cracked in places. He thought he might start bleeding so he went inside for
+some lotion.
+
+"Do we have any lotion" he asked his mother. "In the medicine cabinet" she
+said without looking up from the TV. He walked into the bathroom and looked
+at himself in the mirror. "I look strange" he said to himself "I look like a
+teenager." He stared into his right eye, then his left. He saw nothing but
+his own reflection fish-eyed in his pupils. He opened the medicine cabinet.
+
+Back in his Writing Shack, he started to type.
+
+```type
+What is it about hands that gives
+them such power? It is that their
+power is hidden in the arm. Push
+on the inside of the wrist--the
+hand closes. Reach under the skin
+and pull on the outside tendons--
+the hand opens again. Hands are
+only machines for grasping,
+controlled by the arm, not the
+mind.
+```
diff --git a/src/hardware.txt b/src/hardware.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3ff1ddc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/hardware.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,37 @@
+---
+title: Hardware
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+ title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+ css: paul
+ order: 14
+ next:
+ - title: Treatise
+ link: treatise
+ - title: Hymnal
+ link: hymnal
+ previous:
+ - title: Planks
+ link: planks
+ - title: Hands
+ link: hands
+...
+
+His mother drove him to the Hardware Store on a Tuesday. "I'm glad to see
+you've taken my advice for once" she said. "What do you mean." "Applying to
+work at the Hardware Store. I'm proud of you Paul."
+
+"Oh right. Sure thing." They pulled into the parking lot. "Just be a
+minute" he said as he opened the car door.
+
+He walked under the door resplendent in its King William orange and white. He
+saw the towering rows of shelves like mountain ridges in Hell. He strolled
+among the fixtures, pipes, planks, sheets, plants (Why plants? he thought),
+switches. He realized he didn't know the first thing about building
+furniture. "I don't know the first thing" he muttered to himself "about
+building furniture. I know the last thing would be a couch or chair or stool
+but the first thing is a mystery." He turned around and walked straight out
+of the store and to his mother's car without looking up.
+
+"How'd it go" she asked starting the car. "Great" he said.
diff --git a/src/howithappened.txt b/src/howithappened.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f058c74
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/howithappened.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,35 @@
+---
+title: How it happened
+genre: 'verse'
+
+project:
+ title: Elegies for alternate selves
+ css: elegies
+ order: 14
+ prev:
+ title: I am
+ link: i-am
+ next:
+ title: Love Song
+ link: lovesong
+...
+
+I was away on vacation when I heard--- \
+someone sat at my desk while I was away. \
+They took my pen, while I was taking \
+surf lessons, and wrote the sun into the sky. \
+They pre-approved the earth and the waters, \
+and all of the living things, without even \
+having the decency to text me. It was not I \
+who was behind the phrase "creeping things." \
+When I got back, of course I was pissed, \
+but it was [already written][] into the policy. \
+I'm just saying: don't blame me for Cain \
+killing Abel. That was a murder. I'm not a cop. \
+The Tower of Babel fell on its own. The ark \
+never saw a single drop of rain. I'm [the drunk][] \
+sitting on the curb who just pissed his pants, \
+holding up a sign asking where I am.
+
+[already written]: shipwright.html
+[the drunk]: problems.html
diff --git a/src/howtoread.txt b/src/howtoread.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2fed4be
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/howtoread.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,156 @@
+---
+title: How to read this
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+ title: Elegies for alternate selves
+ css: elegies
+ order: 2
+ next:
+ title: And
+ link: and
+ prev:
+ title: epigraph
+ link: epigraph
+...
+
+This book is an exploration of life, of all possible lives that could be
+lived. Each of the poems contained herein have been written by a different
+person, with his own history, culture, and emotions. True, they are all
+related, but no more than any of us is related through our genetics, our
+shared planet, or our yearnings.
+
+Fernando Pessoa wrote poems under four different identities---he called
+them *heteronyms*---that were known during his lifetime, though after his
+death over sixty have been found and catalogued. He called them heteronyms as
+opposed to pseudonyms because they were much more than names he wrote under.
+They were truly different writing selves, concerned with different ideas and
+writing with different styles: Alberto Caeiro wrote pastorals; Ricardo Reis
+wrote more formal odes; Álvaro de Campos wrote these long, Whitman-esque
+pieces (one to Whitman himself); and Pessoa's own name was used for poems that
+are kind of similar to all the others. It seems as though Pessoa found it
+inefficient to try and write everything he wanted only in his own self; rather
+he parceled out the different pieces and developed them into full identities,
+at the cost of his own: "I subsist as a kind of medium of myself, but I'm less
+real than the others, less substantial, less personal, and easily influenced
+by them all." de Campos said of him at one point, "[Fernando Pessoa, strictly
+speaking, doesn't exist.][pessoa-exist]"
+
+It's not just Pessoa---I, strictly speaking, don't exist, both as the
+specific me that writes this now and as the concept of selfhood, the ego.
+Heraclitus famously said that we can't step into the [same river][] twice, and
+the fact of the matter is that we can't occupy the same self twice. It's
+constantly changing and adapting to new stimuli from the environment, from
+other selves, from inside itself, and each time it forms anew into something
+that's never existed before. The person I am beginning a poem is a separate
+being than the one I am finishing a poem, and part of it is the poem I've
+written has brought forth some other dish onto the great table that is myself.
+
+In the same way, with each poem you read of this, you too could become a
+different person. Depending on which order you read them in, you could be any
+number of possible people. If you follow the threads I've laid out for you,
+there are so many possible selves; if you disregard those and go a different
+way there are quite a few more. However, at the end of the journey there is
+only one self that you will occupy, the others disappearing from this universe
+and going maybe somewhere else, maybe nowhere at all.
+
+There is a scene in *The Neverending Story* where Bastian is trying to find
+his way out of the desert. He opens a door and finds himself in the Temple of
+a Thousand Doors, which is never seen from the outside but only once someone
+enters it. It is a series of rooms with six sides each and three doors: one
+from the room before and two choices. In life, each of these rooms is a
+moment, but where Bastian can choose which of only two doors to enter each
+time, in life there can be any number of doors and we don't always choose
+which to go through---in fact, I would argue that most of the time we aren't
+allowed the luxury.
+
+What happens to those other doors, those other possibilities? Is there some
+other version of the self that for whatever complexities of circumstance and
+will chose a different door at an earlier moment? The answer to this, of
+course, is that we can never know for sure, though this doesn't keep us from
+trying through the process of regret. We go back and try that other door in
+our mind, extrapolating a possible present from our own past. This is
+ultimately unsatisfying, not only because whatever world is imagined is not
+the one currently lived, but because it becomes obvious that the alternate
+model of reality is not complete: we can only extrapolate from the original
+room, absolutely without knowledge of any subsequent possible choices. This
+causes a deep disappointment, a frustration with the inability to know all
+possible timelines (coupled with the insecurity that this may not be the best
+of all possible worlds) that we feel as regret.
+
+In this way, every moment we live is an [elegy][] to every possible future
+that might have stemmed from it. Annie Dillard states this in a biological
+manner when she says in *Pilgrim at Tinker Creek*, "Every glistening egg is a
+memento mori." Nature is inefficient---it spends a hundred lifetimes to get
+one that barely works. The fossil record is littered with the failed
+experiments of evolution, many of which failed due only to blind chance: an
+asteroid, a shift in weather patterns, an inefficient copulation method. Each
+living person today has twenty dead standing behind him, and that only counts
+the people that actually lived. How many missed opportunities stand behind
+any of us?
+
+The real problem with all of this is that time is only additive. There's no
+way to dial it back and start over, with new choices or new environments. Even
+when given the chance to do something again, we do it *again*, with the
+reality given by our previous action. Thus we are constantly creating and
+being created by the world. The self is never the same from one moment to the
+next.
+
+A poem is like a snapshot of a self. If it's any good, it captures the
+emotional core of the self at the time of writing for communication with
+future selves, either within the same person or outside of it. Thus revision
+is possible, and the new poem created will be yet another snapshot of the
+future self as changed by the original poem. The page becomes a window into
+the past, a particular past as experienced by one self. The poem is a
+remembering of a self that no longer exists, in other words, an elegy.
+
+A snapshot doesn't capture the entire subject, however. It leaves out the
+background as it's obscured by foreground objects; it fails to include
+anything that isn't contained in its finite frame. In order to build a
+working definition of identity, we must include all possible selves over all
+possible timelines, combined into one person: identity is the combined effect
+of all possible selves over time. A poem leaves much of this out: it is the
+one person standing in front of twenty ghosts.
+
+A poem is the place where the selves of the reader and the speaker meet, in
+their respective times and places. In this way a poem is outside of time or
+place, because it changes its location each time it's read. Each time it's
+two different people meeting. The problem with a poem is that it's such a
+small window---if we met in real life the way we met in poems, we would see
+nothing of anyone else but a square the size of a postage stamp. It has been
+argued this is the way we see time and ourselves in it, as well: Vonnegut uses
+the metaphor of a subject strapped to a railroad car moving at a set pace,
+with a six-foot-long metal tube placed in front of the subject's eye; the
+landscape in the distance is time, and what we see is the only way in which we
+interact with it. It's the same with a poem and the self: we can only see and
+interact with a small kernel. This is why it's possible to write more than
+one poem.
+
+Due to this kernel nature of poetry, a good poem should focus itself to
+extract as much meaning as possible from that one kernel of identity to which
+it has access. It should be an atom of selfhood, irreducible and resistant to
+paraphrase, because it tries to somehow echo the large unsayable part of
+identity outside the frame of the self. It is the [kernel][] that contains a
+universe, or that speaks around one that's hidden; if it's a successful poem
+then it makes the smallest circuit possible. This is why the commentary on
+poems is so voluminous: a poem is tightly packed meaning that commentators try
+to unpack to get at that universality inside it. A fortress of dialectic is
+constructed that ultimately obstructs the meaning behind the poem; it becomes
+the foreground in the photograph that disallows us to view the horizon beyond
+it.
+
+With this in mind, I collect these poems that were written over a period of
+four years into this book. Where I can, I insert cross-references (like the
+one above, in the margin) to other pieces in the text where I think the two
+resonate in some way. You can read this book in any way you'd like: you can
+go front-to-back, or back-to-front, or you can follow the arrows around, or
+you can work out a complex mathematical formula with Merseinne primes and
+logarithms and the 2000 Census information, or you can go completely randomly
+through like a magazine, or at least the way I flip through magazines. I
+think writing is a communication of the self, and I think this is the best way
+to communicate mine in all its multiversity.
+
+[pessoa-exist]: philosophy.html
+[same river]: mountain.html
+[elegy]: words-meaning.html
+[kernel]: arspoetica.html
diff --git a/src/hymnal.txt b/src/hymnal.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..199746d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/hymnal.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,38 @@
+---
+title: Hymnal
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+ title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+ css: paul
+ order: 2
+ next:
+ - title: Underwear
+ link: underwear
+ - title: Joke
+ link: joke
+ previous:
+ - title: Art
+ link: art
+ - title: Hardware
+ link: hardware
+...
+
+_It's all jokes_ Paul wrote in what he was now calling his Hymnal. He had
+been writing non-stop all day, because he didn't count pee- or cigarette-
+breaks. _All art is an inside joke. The symbology involved must be_---and here
+he put down his pen and held his head in his hands. He could never think of
+the word---he said often that he had no words. He opened to a new page in his
+Hymnal. On the top of it was written in bold script _**HYMN 386: JOKES**_.
+
+Paul scowled. Who had written in his Hymnal? he wondered. He said it out
+loud a moment after: "Who has written in my Hymnal?" He realized he was alone
+in his Writing Shack, which was really a shed in the back of his mother's
+garden. He wondered why he had to say his thoughts before they became real to
+him (if this was a habit or an inborn trait). He realized simultaneously that
+
+(a) he could ask someone and
+(b) that this was something he wondered every time he spoke his thoughts out
+ loud.
+
+He resolved to put the issue to rest by asking someone.
diff --git a/src/i-am.txt b/src/i-am.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f890283
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/i-am.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,37 @@
+---
+title: I am
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+ title: Elegies for alternate selves
+ css: elegies
+ order: 13
+ prev:
+ title: On formal poetry
+ link: onformalpoetry
+ next:
+ title: How it happened
+ link: howithappened
+...
+
+I am a great pillar of [white smoke][]. \
+I am Lot's nameless wife encased in salt. \
+I am the wound on Christ's back as he moans \
+with the pounding of a hammer on his wrist. \
+I am the nail that holds my house together. \
+It is a strong house, built on a good foundation. \
+In the winter, it is warm and crawling things \
+cannot get in. This house will never burn down. \
+It is the house that I built, with my body \
+and with my strength. I am the only one who lives \
+here. I am both father and mother to a race \
+of dust motes that worship me as a god. I have \
+monuments built daily in my honor in dark \
+corners around the house. I destroy all of them \
+before I go to bed, but in the morning \
+there are still more. I don't think I know \
+where all of them are. I [don't think][not think] I can get \
+to all of them anymore. There are too many.
+
+[white smoke]: deathstrumpet.html
+[not think]: howithappened.html
diff --git a/src/joke.txt b/src/joke.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..00053bd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/joke.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,44 @@
+---
+title: Joke
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+ title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+ css: paul
+ order: 33
+ next:
+ - title: Stump
+ link: stump
+ - title: Leaf
+ link: leaf
+ previous:
+ - title: Punch
+ link: punch
+ - title: Hymnal
+ link: hymnal
+...
+
+He wrote _**JOKES**_ on the top of a page in his notebook. He had run out of
+notecards and hadn't been able to convince his mother to go to the Office
+Supply Store for him. He left a space underneath it and wrote.
+
+_"Tell us a joke" the listeners say to the clown. They have gather together
+in the clearing because they have heard he would be there, and they have heard
+he knew very funny jokes that were also true. "Tell us a joke that is true"
+they say._
+
+_The clown does not move from the stump. He doesn't move at all. The
+listeners watch, gap-mouthed, as a butterfly lands on his hat. A breeze
+ruffles his coat and the butterfly flies away. Hours pass. The listeners
+grow impatient. Some begin yelling insults at the clown. Eventually, they
+begin to walk away into the woods._
+
+_The moon rises on the clearing. The only people left are the clown and a
+listener, the last listener. She has been waiting for the joke a long time.
+The clown opens his mouth and she leans in closer to hear. He closes it as a
+tear falls onto his coat, then another. He opens his mouth again in a sob.
+The listener walks over to him and puts a hand on his shoulder._
+
+_"I'm sorry" says the clown. "Sorry for what" she asks. "I don't know. I
+don't know any jokes." He disappears. The last listener sits on the log and
+looks at the sky. There are no stars._
diff --git a/src/leaf.txt b/src/leaf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dec253c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/leaf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,35 @@
+---
+title: Leaf
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+ title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+ css: paul
+ order: 3
+ next:
+ - title: Writing
+ link: writing
+ - title: Leg
+ link: leg
+ previous:
+ - title: Axe
+ link: axe
+ - title: Joke
+ link: joke
+...
+
+He shrugged the wood off his shoulder, letting it fall with a clog onto the
+earth floor of his Writing Shack. He exhaled looking out of the window. He
+hoped to see a bird fly by, maybe a blue jay or raven. No bird did. He
+inhaled. He exhaled again in a way that could only be classified as a sigh.
+He sat down at his writing desk. He began shuffling through what he'd
+written, trying to find some sort of pattern.
+
+"*Each piece of paper---each leaf---*" at this he smiled--- "*is like a tree
+in the forest.*" He was writing as he thought aloud. "*I, as the artist, as
+the **writer**, must select which to use, chop down those trees, bring them
+back to my shed and*---and---" he frowned as he realized the only end to this
+metaphor was fire. He ran his fingers through his hair in a self-soothing
+gesture.
+
+"I need to build some furniture" he thought.
diff --git a/src/leg.txt b/src/leg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ec09227
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/leg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,48 @@
+---
+title: Leg
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+ title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+ css: paul
+ order: 12
+ next:
+ - title: Planks
+ link: planks
+ - title: Man
+ link: man
+ previous:
+ - title: Toilet
+ link: toilet
+ - title: Leaf
+ link: leaf
+...
+
+His first chair was a stool. It was an uneven wobbly stool that would not
+support even forty pounds. "So my first chair is a broken stool" he said
+after nearly breaking his tailbone on the dirt floor. "Maybe I should start
+again but this time only with legs." He began again but this time only with
+legs. He built one leg, which means he cut a straight piece of wood down to
+four feet in length, whittled the bark off, and sanded it down smooth in what
+he was now calling his Woodworking Shack. He typed up a note on how to make
+chair legs.
+
+```type
+MAKING CHAIR LEGS
+
+1. get longish piece of wood
+2. cut it to length (4 feet I'd
+ recommend)
+3. whittle off bark
+4. sand smooth the leg
+```
+
+After he tried remembered tried standing the leg up, failing, and after much
+thought realizing that the ends needed to be flat, he typed one more line on
+his notecard:
+
+```
+5. make ends flat
+```
+
+He had no tools with which to flatten the ends of his leg.
diff --git a/src/likingthings.txt b/src/likingthings.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1c9c15a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/likingthings.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,57 @@
+---
+title: Liking Things
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+ title: Book of Hezekiah
+ css: hezekiah
+ order: 7
+ prev:
+ title: Problems
+ link: problems
+...
+
+The definition of happiness is *doing stuff that you really like*. That
+stuff can be eating soup, going to the bathroom, walking the dog,
+playing Dungeons and Dragons; whatever keeps your mind off the fact that
+you're so goddamn unhappy all the time. That, incidentally, is the
+definition of like: *that feeling you get when you forget how miserable
+you are for just a little bit*. Thus people like doing stuff they like
+all the time, as often as possible; because if they remember how
+horrible they really feel at not having a background to put themselves
+against, they will want to hurt themselves and those around them.
+
+The funny thing is that something we people really like to do is hurt
+ourselves and those around us. We do this by thinking other people are
+more unhappy than we are. We convince themselves that we are truly
+happy, ecstatic even, while they merely plod around life half-heartedly,
+or, if they're lucky, incorrectly. We take it upon ourselves (seeing as
+we are so happy, and can spare a little bit of happiness) to help them
+become happy as well. We fail to realize that the people will probably
+not appreciate our thinking that we're better than they are somehow, for
+that is what we do even if we don't mean it. We forget that we are also
+unhappy, and that we are just doing things we like in order to cheer
+ourselves up a little bit, which really means that this cheering is
+working; but there is such a thing as working too well. So in a sense
+what I'm doing here is cheering myself up by reminding you that you are
+unhappy; I'm trying to keep you honest in your unhappiness; and I admit
+this is usually called a dick move.
+
+In fact, the best way to overcome happy-hungering (this is the term as I
+dub it) is commit as many dick moves as possible, to keep people
+remembering that unhappiness abounds. If you see someone smiling like a
+little dog who knows it's about to get pet or get a treat or go to the
+vet to donate doggy sperm, smile back. Grin toothily (a little too
+toothily for a little too long). Their smile will start to fade if
+you're doing it right. Saunter to them, slide as if you're an Olympic
+quality ice-skater, as if you're a really good bowler who knows he's
+playing against twelve year olds and'll win by a hundred. Get really
+close. Far too close for what most people would call comfort. And remind
+them of how awful life can be: "I really like your [shirt][]---really only
+children chained to looms can get that tight of a weave," you can say,
+or "You're not really going to recycle that coffee cup, are you?" They
+will probably get angry, but that's what's supposed to happen. By making
+dick moves, you can overcome what may be the biggest evil on this earth:
+Happy-Hungering.
+
+[shirt]: theoceanoverflowswithcamels.html
diff --git a/src/lovesong.txt b/src/lovesong.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e504e14
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/lovesong.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,41 @@
+---
+title: Love Song
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+ title: Elegies for alternate selves
+ css: elegies
+ order: 15
+ prev:
+ title: How it happened
+ link: howithappened
+ next:
+ title: Rough gloves
+ link: roughgloves
+...
+
+Walking along in the dark is a good way to begin a song. Walking home in
+the dark after a long day chasing criminals is another. Running away
+from an imagined evil is no way to begin a story.
+
+I am telling you this because you wanted to know what it's like to tell
+something so beautiful everyone will cry. I am telling you because I
+want you to know what it is to keep everything inside of you. I am
+telling you.
+
+Can you see? Can you see into me and reach in your hand and pull me
+inside out, like an [old shirt][]? Will you wear me until I unravel on your
+shoulders, will you cut me apart and use my skin to clean up the cola
+you spill on the floor when you're drunk?
+
+I want you to know that I want you to know. Do you want me? To know is
+to know. I, you want we. We want. That is why we're here. To want is to
+be is to want and I want you. Do you also? Check yes or no.
+
+There is a way to end every story, [every song][]. Every criminal must be
+caught. Even those who cry dry their tears. I cannot tell you all I want
+because I want to tell you everything. There is no art because there is
+no mirror big enough. We wake up every day. Sometimes we sleep.
+
+[old shirt]: ronaldmcdonald.html
+[every song]: swansong.html
diff --git a/src/man.txt b/src/man.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..686411f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/man.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,43 @@
+---
+title: Man
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+ title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+ css: paul
+ order: 22
+ next:
+ - title: Snow
+ link: snow
+ - title: Notes
+ link: notes
+ previous:
+ - title: Cereal
+ link: cereal
+ - title: Leg
+ link: leg
+...
+
+_THIS MAN REFUSED TO OPEN HIS EYES_
+
+Paul read this on an old mugshot in the library. He had taken the bus into
+town to check out a few books on woodworking and got distracted by the True
+Crime section. He found this mugshot in a book titled _Crooks like Us_ that
+was published in Sydney. He liked how cities were named after women, or how
+women were named after cities, whichever was true.
+
+The man in the picture's eyes were tightly shut, as though he'd just come into
+the brightness of day after being dark inside for a long time. His head was
+tilted up and slightly to the right. He was wearing a short light tie with
+hash marks, and a pinstripe suit. Paul wished the photograph was in color.
+He was standing in front of a plain brown wall covered in fabric.
+
+The man's eyes were not so tightly shut as Paul first thought. His eyebrows
+lifted away from the eyes, giving the man a bemused look. His mouth was
+slightly opened in what seemed to Paul like a grin. This was accentuated by
+the man's ears, which were large. Paul wasn't sure why the ears made the man
+look happier. He wondered what crime he had committed.
+
+Above the man's head was written _T. BEDE.22.11.28 / 203 A_. _THIS MAN
+REFUSED TO OPEN HIS EYES_ was written over his suit, directly below his
+ribcage.
diff --git a/src/moongone.txt b/src/moongone.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ad9135b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/moongone.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,30 @@
+---
+title: The moon is gone and in its place a mirror
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+ title: Elegies for alternate selves
+ css: elegies
+ order: 18
+ prev:
+ title: Ronald McDonald
+ link: ronaldmcdonald
+ next:
+ title: The mountain
+ link: mountain
+...
+
+The moon is gone and in its place a mirror. Looking at the night sky now
+yields nothing but the viewer's own face as viewed from a million miles,
+surrounded by the landscape he is only vaguely aware of being surrounded
+by. He believes that he is [alone][], surrounded by desert and mountain, but
+behind him---he now sees it---someone is sneaking up on him. He spins around
+fast, but no one is there on [Earth][]. He looks back up and they are yet
+closer in the night sky. Again he looks over his shoulder but there is
+nothing, not even a desert mouse. As he looks up again he realizes it's
+a cloud above him, which due to optics has looked like someone else. The
+cloud blocks out the moon which is now a mirror, and the viewer is
+completely alone.
+
+[alone]: apollo11.html
+[Earth]: serengeti.html
diff --git a/src/mountain.txt b/src/mountain.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c1666e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/mountain.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
+---
+title: The mountain
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+ title: Elegies for alternate selves
+ css: elegies
+ order: 19
+ prev:
+ title: The moon is gone and in its place a mirror
+ link: moonegone
+ next:
+ title: Serengeti
+ link: serengeti
+...
+
+The other side of this mountain \
+is not the mountain. This side \
+is honey-golden, sticky-sweet, \
+full of phone conversations with mother. \
+The other side is a bell, \
+ringing in the church-steeple \
+the day mother died.
+
+The other side of the mountain \
+[is not a mountain. It is a dark][apollo] \
+valley crossed by a river. \
+There is a ferry at the bottom.
+
+This mountain is not a mountain. \
+I walked to the top, but it turned \
+and was only a shelf halfway up. \
+I felt like an unused Bible \
+sitting on a [dusty pew][].
+
+A hawk soars over the mountain. \
+She is looking for home.
+
+[apollo]: apollo11.html
+[dusty pew]: and.html
diff --git a/src/movingsideways.txt b/src/movingsideways.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bc373e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/movingsideways.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,63 @@
+---
+title: Moving Sideways
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+ title: Book of Hezekiah
+ css: hezekiah
+ order: 5
+ next:
+ title: Problems
+ link: problems
+ prev:
+ title: Proverbs
+ link: proverbs
+...
+
+A dog moving sideways is sick; a man moving sideways is drunk. Thus if
+you want to be mindful of the movings of the universe sideways, become
+either drunk or sick. By doing this you remove yourself from the
+equation, and are able to observe, without being observed, the universe
+as it dances sideways drunkenly.
+
+Shit wait. The problem is not that by observing you are observed
+(although quantum mechanics may disagree[^1]), because obviously dogs
+don't know we're observing them when we watch them through cameras in
+their little yard while they play and eat and poop---who poops knowingly
+on camera? The problem is *the actual act of observing that distorts the
+world into what we want it to be*.
+
+What I want to know is this: Why is this necessarily a problem? The dog
+is made, by mankind, to frolic and poop and sniff and growl and dig. Why
+cannot the man be made to observe the world incorrectly around him, and
+worry about it? Men have always wandered about the earth; does it not
+make sense that also they should wonder in their minds what makes it all
+work?[^2] In fact this is the very center of the creative being: the
+ability to move sideways, to dance with reality and judge it as it
+judges you, much like teenagers at the junior prom.
+
+Of course, reality doesn't judge us back. But that doesn't mean that it
+doesn't! If you think it's judging you, then *observe in your
+surroundings your own insecurities*. It is obvious that this way of
+doing things is far from vogue; usually projecting [inner pain][] onto the
+outer world is classified as pathology. However, this is because it is
+assumed that the outer world is *on its own terms*, which it obviously
+isn't, as far as we know. It follows that as [there is no backdrop][backdrop]
+against which to judge our quirks, the quirks must not exist. Thus all
+is right with the world.
+
+[inner pain]: telemarketer.html
+[backdrop]: philosophy.html
+
+[^1]: Quantum mechanics, as is well known, are the most hornery and
+ least agreeable of all mechanics. The cost to get one quantum
+ serviced is usually at least eight times more expensive than the
+ cost of an average automobile tune-up, for reasons not clearly
+ known. The quantum mechanics themselves claim it's the smallness of
+ their work that justifies the price, but it doesn't really look like
+ they're doing anything, and besides, my quantum always seems to
+ break again within six months---maybe I'm just driving it too hard.
+
+[^2]: I attempted to strike this terrible pun from the account, but
+ Hezekiah demanded I keep it if he were to continue the relation of
+ his prophecy-slash-advice column
diff --git a/src/notes.txt b/src/notes.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..024d18b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/notes.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,44 @@
+---
+title: Notes
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+ title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+ css: paul
+ order: 8
+ next:
+ - title: Shed
+ link: shed
+ - title: Options
+ link: options
+ previous:
+ - title: Writing
+ link: writing
+ - title: Man
+ link: man
+...
+
+Paul began typing on notecards. Somehow this felt right to his sensibilities.
+It was difficult to get the little cards into the typewriter. It was a pain
+to readjust the typewriter for regular paper when he wasn't writing. He
+started typing everything on those little notecards: grocery lists, letters to
+his grandmother, even reports for work (which is what got him in trouble).
+
+But this was all later. For now he was writing his ideas, "notes" he now
+called them, something for him to combine later into something. He didn't
+like to think about it. On this particular cold winter morning, he wrote
+
+```type
+Woke up from a dream I was famous.
+One of the more famous people in
+fact. I had written something
+everyone could relate to and at
+the same time proved my parents
+wrong. Because I made a lot of
+money. Or not a lot, but enough
+and more than they thought I
+would. It was a good day.
+Woke up this morning and I was
+still cold. Still Paul. Still not
+good at furniture.
+```
diff --git a/src/onformalpoetry.txt b/src/onformalpoetry.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e654b4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/onformalpoetry.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,36 @@
+---
+title: On formal poetry
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+ title: Elegies for alternate selves
+ css: elegies
+ order: 12
+ prev:
+ title: Feeding the raven
+ link: feedingtheraven
+ next:
+ title: I am
+ link: i-am
+...
+
+I think that I could write formal poems \
+exclusively, or at least inclusive \
+with all the other stuff I write \
+I guess. Of course, I've already written \
+a few, this one included, though "formal" \
+is maybe a stretch. Is blank verse a form? \
+What is form anyway? I picture old \
+women counting [stitches on their knitting][knitting], \
+keeping iambs next to iambs in lines \
+as straight and sure as arrows. But my sock \
+is lumpy, poorly made: it's beginning \
+to unravel. Stresses don't line up. Syl- \
+lables forced to fit like [McNugget][] molds. \
+That cliché on the arrow? I'm aware. \
+My prepositions too---God, where's it stop? \
+The answer: never. I will never stop \
+writing poems, or hating what I write.
+
+[knitting]: roughgloves.html
+[McNugget]: ronaldmcdonald.html
diff --git a/src/options.txt b/src/options.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..59f2c93
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/options.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,43 @@
+---
+title: Options
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+ title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+ css: paul
+ order: 26
+ next:
+ - title: Stagnant
+ link: stagnant
+ - title: Paul
+ link: paul
+ previous:
+ - title: Swear
+ link: swear
+ - title: Notes
+ link: notes
+...
+
+What did he do when he was in the woods? Where did he go? Was there always
+one spot, one clearing deep within the heart of them, that he would visit?
+Did he talk to the trees or only to himself? When he chopped down trees, did
+he leave them there to rot in the quiet or did he drag them out of the woods,
+behind his Shack, and dismember them? Did he use any for firewood, or did the
+pieces rot behind his Shack, forgotten? When was the last time he built any
+furniture? Did he get any better at building it or did he just quit at some
+point, let the desire to create fall behind him like a forgotten felled tree?
+
+A tree fell in the forest: did it make a noise? Paul typed his thoughts on
+cards, or wrote them in a book: did anyone read it? If anyone did, was his
+life changed? For the better or the worse? Did he glance at the mess in the
+top drawer of his Writing Desk as he cleaned the Shack out long after Paul had
+quit using it? Did he put tools in there or leave it empty? What did he do
+with the desk? Did he add it to the pile of rotting wood out back, or did he
+chop it up for a bonfire with friends, or a cozy fire with his wife and
+children, or did he take it to the dump three miles away to rot there? Are
+these all the options?
+
+Did Paul ever think about any of this? Walking in the woods one afternoon
+after becoming frustrated with his writing, did he sit on a stump and cry?
+Did he wonder whether he should have made other choices? Did he consider
+quitting smoking?
diff --git a/src/paul.txt b/src/paul.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e95776b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/paul.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,54 @@
+---
+title: Paul
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+ title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+ css: paul
+ order: 38
+ next:
+ - title: Fire
+ link: fire
+ - title: Phone
+ link: phone
+ previous:
+ - title: Father
+ link: father
+ - title: Options
+ link: options
+...
+
+```type
+CONTENTS OF THE SHED
+
+- typewriter
+- writing desk
+- notecards (top drawer of desk)
+- pen (fountain)
+- inkpot (empty)
+- wood (a lot, more out back)
+- bare lightbulb
+- candle
+- wooden shelf with tools:
+ - claw hammer
+ - screwdriver
+ - prybar
+ - 2x wrench (different
+ kinds)
+- tiller machine
+- push lawnmower
+- hatchet
+- axe
+```
+
+He typed the list in the typewriter and looked around some more. He wanted to
+make sure he didn't miss anything. Finally it hit him and he smiled. He
+typed one more line, stood up, and went out of the shed.
+
+```type
+- Paul Bunyon
+```
+
+He got some kerosene from under the house, poured it around the base of the
+shed, lit a cigarette. He smoked half of it and threw it down to start the
+fire.
diff --git a/src/philosophy.txt b/src/philosophy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0ac114f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/philosophy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,38 @@
+---
+title: Philosophy
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+ title: Book of Hezekiah
+ css: hezekiah
+ order: 3
+ next:
+ title: Proverbs
+ link: proverbs
+ prev:
+ title: The purpose of dogs
+ link: purpose-dogs
+...
+
+Importance is important. But meaning is meaningful. Here we are at the
+crux of the matter, for both meaning and importance are also
+human-formed. So it would seem that nothing is important or meaningful,
+if importance and meaning are of themselves only products of the
+fallible human intellect. But here is the great secret: *so is the
+fallibility of the human intellect a mere product of the fallible human
+intellect.* The question here arises: Is anything real, and not a mere
+invention of a mistaken human mind? By real of course I mean
+"that which is *on its own terms*," that is, without any [modification][] on
+the part of mankind by observing it. But such a thing is impossible to
+be known, for if it be known it has certainly been observed by someone,
+and so it is not on its own terms but on the terms of the observer. So
+it cannot be known if anything exists on its own terms, for it exists on
+its own terms we certainly will not know anything about it.
+
+By this it is possible to see that nothing is knowable without the
+mediating factor of our mind fucking up the "[raw][]," the "real" world. But
+by this time it would seem that this chapter is far far too
+philosophical, not to mention pretentious, so I must try again.
+
+[modification]: i-am.html
+[raw]: spittle.html
diff --git a/src/phone.txt b/src/phone.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1460180
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/phone.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,42 @@
+---
+title: Phone
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+ title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+ css: paul
+ order: 16
+ next:
+ - title: Tapestry
+ link: tapestry
+ - title: Planks
+ link: planks
+ previous:
+ - title: Treatise
+ link: treatise
+ - title: Paul
+ link: paul
+...
+
+"Hello Paul this is Jill Jill Noe remember me" the voice on the phone was a
+woman's. He nodded into the receiver. "Hello" Jill asked again "hello?"
+Paul remembered that phones work by talking and said "Hello Jill."
+
+"Do you remember me" she asked "we were in school together? How have you
+been?" "Pretty well" said Paul "I've been writing and making furniture." "Oh
+that's nice" said the woman's voice tinny in the phone "Listen I ran into your
+mother at the Supermarket the other day and she said you need a job. You
+still need one?" Paul had to tell the truth. His mother was watching him out
+of the corner of her eye as she was playing dominoes at the kitchen table.
+"Yes" he said sighing "Although woodworking takes up much of my time."
+
+"OK" she laughed uncomortably "I actually have something you could do for me
+if you think you can get away from woodworking a bit. It's just data entry
+really basic stuff entry-level." "What's it pay" he asked. "Minimum but
+there is room for movement." "OK" he said. "Start on Monday okay?" "Sure"
+he said "bye" and the tin voice in the phone said "Goodbye Paul see you" by
+the time he put it back on the hook.
+
+"Who was that" asked his mother. "Jill Noe" he said. "Oh her was she calling
+about a job for you?" "Yes starts Monday" he said. She smiled behind her
+glasses reflecting dominoes.
diff --git a/src/planks.txt b/src/planks.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..698f982
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/planks.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,38 @@
+---
+title: Planks
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+ title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+ css: paul
+ order: 13
+ next:
+ - title: Hardware
+ link: hardware
+ - title: Punch
+ link: punch
+ previous:
+ - title: Leg
+ link: leg
+ - title: Phone
+ link: phone
+...
+
+```type
+EVERYTHING CHANGES OR EVERYTHING
+STAYS THE SAME
+```
+
+This sat alone on a blank notecard in Paul's typewriter. He stared at it,
+sipping at his too-hot coffee. This made sense to him.
+
+He looked at the spot on the wall where he wanted a window to be, at the rough
+planks above his desk as they were lit by the bare hanging lightbulb. He
+sipped his coffee again. It was still too hot. His Woodworking Shack was
+becoming full of wood that was not furniture. He feared it would never become
+so.
+
+He threw open the door to the snow and the ground below it. He reached for
+his axe on the wall. He reconsidered. He took a few tentative steps onto the
+blankness on his own. He wasn't cold, not yet. He walked into the forest.
+The snow crunched under his feet and did not echo.
diff --git a/src/prelude.txt b/src/prelude.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..91d4541
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/prelude.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,17 @@
+---
+title: Prelude
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+ title: Book of Hezekiah
+ css: hezekiah
+ order: 1
+ next:
+ title: The purpose of dogs
+ link: purpose-dogs
+...
+
+Of course, there is a God. Of course, there is no God. Of course, what's
+really important is that these aren't important. No, they are; but not
+really important. All that's important is the relative importance of
+non-important things. Shit. Never mind; let's start over.
diff --git a/src/problems.txt b/src/problems.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c5de325
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/problems.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,72 @@
+---
+title: Problems
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+ title: Book of Hezekiah
+ css: hezekiah
+ order: 6
+ next:
+ title: Liking things
+ link: likingthings
+ prev:
+ title: Moving sideways
+ link: movingsideways
+...
+
+The problem with people is this: we cannot be happy. No matter how hard
+or easy we try, it is not to be. It seems sometimes that, just as the
+dog was made for jumping in mud and sniffing out foxholes and having a
+good time all around, man was made for sadness, loneliness and
+heartache.
+
+Being the observant and judgmental people they are, people have for a
+long time tried to figure out why they aren't happy. Some say it's
+because we're obviously doing something wrong. Some say it's because we
+think too much. Some insist that it's because other people have more
+stuff than we do. These people don't have a clue any more than any of
+the rest of us. At least I don't think they do, and that's good enough
+for me.[^1] I think that the reason why people are unhappy (and this is
+a personal opinion) is that they realize on some level (for some it's a
+pretty shallow level, others it's way down there next to their love for
+women's stockings[^2]) that there is no background to put themselves
+against, no "[big picture][]" to get painted into. This makes sense, because
+on one level, the level of everyday life, the level of *observation*,
+there is always a background---look in a pair of binoculars sometime. But
+on another level, that of ... shit, wait. There are no other levels.[^3]
+
+What's more, people try to explain how to get happy again (although it's
+doubtful they were ever happy in the first place---people are very good at
+fooling). Some say standing or [sitting in a building][] with a lot of other
+unhappy people helps. Some say that you can't stop there; you also need
+to sing with those other unhappy people about how unhappy you are, and
+how you wish someone would come along and help you out, I guess by
+giving you money or something. I say all you really need to be happy is
+a good stiff drink.[^4]
+
+In any case, people have for some reason or another, and to some end or
+another, always been unhappy. And people have always tried to figure out
+ways to be less unhappy---one of the most important things to people
+everywhere is called "the pursuit of happiness." I think that calling it
+a pursuit makes people feel more like dogs, who are the most happy
+beings most people can think of. By pursuing happiness, they're like a
+dog pursuing a possum or a bone on a fishing rod: two activities that
+sound like a lot of fun to most people. I think most people wish they
+were dogs.
+
+[big picture]: ronaldmcdonald.html
+[sitting in a buiding]: feedingtheraven.html
+
+
+[^1]: This seems to be an attempt on Hezzy's part to set an example for
+ mankind. It should be noted that he is an alcoholic, and not in any
+ shape to be an example to anyone.
+
+[^2]: It is thought that only the leg coverings of the female sex are
+ here referenced
+
+[^3]: You have hereby found the super special secret cheat code room.
+ Yes, this is just like Super Mario Brothers---you can skip right to
+ the end. Go and face the final boss already!
+
+[^4]: See footnote, above
diff --git a/src/proverbs.txt b/src/proverbs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d0ae38f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/proverbs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,47 @@
+---
+title: Proverbs
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+ title: Book of Hezekiah
+ css: hezekiah
+ order: 4
+ next:
+ title: Moving sideways
+ link: movingsideways
+ prev:
+ title: Philosophy
+ link: philosophy
+...
+
+[Nothing matters; everything is sacred. Everything matters; nothing is
+sacred][sacred].[^1] This is the only way we can move forward: by moving
+sideways. Life is a great big rugby game, and the entire field has to be run
+for a goal. The fact that the beginning two verses of this chapter have the
+same number of characters proves that they are a tautological pair, that is,
+they *complete each other*. Sometimes life seems like a dog wagging its tail,
+smiling up at you and wanting you to love it, just wanting that, simple simple
+love, oblivious to the fact that it just ran through your immaculately groomed
+flower garden and tracked all the mud in onto your freshly steamed carpet.
+Life is not life in a suburb. [There are no rosebushes, groomed never. There
+is no carpet, steamed at any time.][rosebush] The dog looks at you wanting you
+to love it. It wants to know that you know that it's there. *It wants to be
+observed*.[\^2]
+
+[sacred]: words-meaning.html
+[rosebush]: lovesong.html
+
+[^1]: Thank you Tom Stoppard. Ha ha ho ho and hee hee.
+
+[^2]: Ah ha! I knew this was going to happen at some point. Now things
+ are going to get more interesting because the dog wants what we
+ thought was a bad thing, right? Right? Didn't we go through that
+ part about how observing made it impossible to really know anything,
+ and I had to start over because it's really hard to figure out what
+ you're talking about when reality slips out of your hands like a
+ fish, but you're not a cat with claws so it just flops right outta
+ your hand back into the lake. (By the way, Nirvana is thought to be
+ what a drop of water feels upon flopping into a lake---doesn't that
+ seem important? Doesn't it seem like a fish and a drop of water here
+ are connected? It helps, of course, that the fish represents Reality
+ here.)
diff --git a/src/punch.txt b/src/punch.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9509143
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/punch.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,39 @@
+---
+title: Punch
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+ title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+ css: paul
+ order: 32
+ next:
+ - title: Joke
+ link: joke
+ - title: Question
+ link: question
+ previous:
+ - title: Wallpaper
+ link: wallpaper
+ - title: Planks
+ link: planks
+...
+
+When he finally got back to work he was surprised they threw him a party.
+_**WELCOME BACK PAUL!**_ was written on a big banner across the back wall.
+Someone had ordered a confectioner's-sugar cake with frosting flowers on the
+corners. It said the same thing as the banner. "Welcome back, Paul" said
+Jill as he was at the punch bowl. The cup was on the table as he ladled punch
+in with his right hand. His left was wrapped in gauze.
+
+"Let me help you with that" said Jill. Paul had a strange feeling this had
+happened before. She took the ladle and their hands touched. She picked the
+cup up in her right hand and used her left to lift the spoon. "You know" she
+said "we were worried about you. When Jerry heard about your hand he said
+'There goes one of our best data entry men.'" "I still can't really move my
+left hand" said Paul. "That's alright you can take your time with the entry."
+"I'm sorry."
+
+"Sorry for what" she looked at his eyes. He imagined her seeing fisheye
+versions of herself in them. "I don't know" he said because it was true.
+"It's alright anyway" she said and placed the full punch cup in his right
+hand.
diff --git a/src/purpose-dogs.txt b/src/purpose-dogs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..052b656
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/purpose-dogs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,42 @@
+---
+title: The purpose of dogs
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+ title: Book of Hezekiah
+ css: hezekiah
+ order: 2
+ next:
+ title: Philosophy
+ link: philosophy
+ prev:
+ title: Prelude
+ link: prelude
+...
+
+Okay, so as we said in [the Prelude][], there either is or isn't a God. This
+has been one of the main past times of humanity, ever since ... since the
+first man (or woman) climbed out of whatever slime or swamp he thumbed his way
+out of. What humanity has failed to realize is that an incredibly plausible
+third, and heretofore unknown, hypothesis also exists: There is a dog.
+
+In fact, there are many dogs, and not only that. There are also many types of
+dogs; these are called breeds, and each breed was created by man in order to
+fulfill some use that man thought he needed. Some dogs are for chasing birds,
+and some are for chasing badgers. Some are for laying in your lap and being
+petted all day. Some dogs don't seem to be really for anything, besides being
+fucking stupid and chewing up your one-of-a-kind collectible
+individually-numbered King Kong figurine from the Peter Jackson film. But the
+important thing is, (and here we go with important things again) all dogs have
+been bred by people for performing some certain function that we think is
+important.
+
+Note: *Just because we think it's important doesn't mean it is
+important.* But it might as well be, because what we as humans think is
+important is important. But be careful! just because something's important
+doesn't mean it means anything, or that it actually makes anything happen.
+Even though just because something makes something else happen doesn't mean
+it's important. [Shit][]. Let me start again.
+
+[the Prelude]: prelude.html
+[Shit]: feedingtheraven.html
diff --git a/src/question.txt b/src/question.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..edaea2f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/question.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,43 @@
+---
+title: Question
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+ title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+ css: paul
+ order: 19
+ next:
+ - title: Sapling
+ link: sapling
+ - title: Reports
+ link: reports
+ previous:
+ - title: Window
+ link: window
+ - title: Punch
+ link: punch
+...
+
+"Do you have to say your thoughts out loud for them to mean anything" Paul
+asked Jill on his first coffee break at work. It was in the city and his
+mother told him she wouldn't drive him so he'd had to take the bus. Number 3
+he thought it was – he couldn't quite remember. Jill said "Sorry what?" Paul
+realized that she hadn't really noticed him there in the break room as he was
+hunched behind the refrigerator a little and she was busy pouring coffee and
+exactly two tablespoons of both milk and sugar into her mug before she put the
+coffee in. He decided to repeat the question.
+
+"How do you think" he asked. "Like everyone else I guess" she said "I have a
+thought and if it's important I write it down." "Do you have to say them out
+loud for them to make sense?" "Are you asking if I talk to myself?" A pause.
+"I guess so" he said looking down. He had a feeling this was a bad thing.
+"Sometimes" she said and walked out of the break room. She didn't understand
+the importance of his question. She popped her head back in a moment later and
+his heart leaped in his chest.
+
+"How's your first day going so far" she asked. "Can you understand everything
+okay?" "Yes" he said "you were right it's pretty basic." "Good" she said.
+"Paul?" "Yes." "Do you have to say all of your thoughts out loud to remember
+them?" He shook his head.
+
+Only all of the time, Paul thought to himself but didn't speak.
diff --git a/src/reports.txt b/src/reports.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..61f7e12
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/reports.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
+---
+title: Reports
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+ title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+ css: paul
+ order: 24
+ next:
+ - title: Swear
+ link: swear
+ - title: Sapling
+ link: sapling
+ previous:
+ - title: Snow
+ link: snow
+ - title: Question
+ link: question
+...
+
+"Paul, you can't turn in your reports on four-by-six notecards" Jill told him
+after he handed her his reports, typed carefully on twelve four-by-six
+notecards. He had spent the weekend
+
+1. going to the Office Supply Store to buy notecards and typewriter ribbon (he
+ found it surprisingly easily) after his first payday
+2. replacing the ribbon in his typewriter (this took approximately half an
+ hour, because he had to figure it all out on his own)
+3. opening the package of notecards (this took approximately four seconds,
+ although he still had to figure out how to do it on his own. It was just
+ easier)
+4. carefully typing the reports he'd handwritten on letter paper onto the
+ notecards (he made many mistakes and threw away many notecards, though
+ later he used them for kindling)
+
+so understandably he was upset. He told Jill all the work he'd gone to to
+type those notecard reports for her, for the company. She shook her head.
+"Paul, you don't have to do all that work at home. Just type it up on the
+computers here, that's all you need to do. Thanks for the work though." He
+nodded as she threw the notecards into the trashcan and left his cubicle.
diff --git a/src/ronaldmcdonald.txt b/src/ronaldmcdonald.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a719ef8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/ronaldmcdonald.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,49 @@
+---
+title: Ronald McDonald
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+ title: Elegies for alternate selves
+ css: elegies
+ order: 17
+ prev:
+ title: Rough gloves
+ link: roughgloves
+ next:
+ title: The moon is gone and in its place a mirror
+ link: moongone
+...
+
+When Ronald McDonald takes off his [striped shirt][], \
+his coveralls, his painted face: when he no longer looks \
+like anyone or anything special, sitting next to women
+
+in bars or standing in the aisle at the grocery, \
+is he no longer Ronald? Is he no longer happy to kick \
+a soccer ball around with the kids in the park,
+
+is he suddenly unable to enjoy the french fries \
+he gets for his fifty percent off? I'd like to think \
+that he takes Ronald off like a shirt, hangs him
+
+in a closet where he breathes darkly in the musk. \
+I'd like to believe that we are able to slough off selves \
+like old skin and still retain some base self.
+
+Of course we all know this is not what happens. \
+The Ronald leering at women drunkenly is the same who \
+the next day kicks at a ball the size of a head.
+
+He is the same that hugs his children at night, \
+who has sex with his wife on the weekends when they're \
+not so tired to make it work, who smiles holding
+
+a basket of fries in front of a field. He cannot \
+take off the facepaint or the [yellow gloves][]. They are \
+stuck to him like so many feathers with the tar
+
+of his everyday associations. His plight is that \
+of everyone's---we are what we do who we are.
+
+[striped shirt]: theoceanoverflowswithcamels.html
+[yellow gloves]: roughgloves.html
diff --git a/src/roughgloves.txt b/src/roughgloves.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ef77f6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/roughgloves.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,34 @@
+---
+title: Rough gloves
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+ title: Elegies for alternate selves
+ css: elegies
+ order: 16
+ prev:
+ title: Love Song
+ link: lovesong
+ next:
+ title: Ronald McDonald
+ link: ronaldmcdonald
+...
+
+I lost my hands & knit replacement ones \
+from spiders' threads, stronger than steel but soft \
+as lambs' wool. Catching as they do on nails \
+& your collarbone, you don't seem to like \
+their rough warm presence on your [cheek or thigh][]. \
+I've asked you if you minded, you've said no \
+(your face a table laid with burnt meat, bread \
+so stale it could [break a hand][]). Remember \
+your senile mother's face above that table? \
+I'd say she got the meaning of that look. \
+You'd rather not be touched by these rough gloves, \
+the only way I have to knit a love \
+against whatever winters we may enter \
+like a silkworm in a spider's blackened [maw][].
+
+[cheek or thigh]: feedingtheraven.html
+[break a hand]: weplayedthosegamestoo.html
+[maw]: serengeti.html
diff --git a/src/sapling.txt b/src/sapling.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e61d3ea
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/sapling.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,43 @@
+---
+title: Sapling
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+ title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+ css: paul
+ order: 20
+ next:
+ - title: Cereal
+ link: cereal
+ - title: Shed
+ link: shed
+ previous:
+ - title: Question
+ link: question
+ - title: Reports
+ link: reports
+...
+
+He chopped down a sapling pine tree and looked at his watch. From first chop
+to fall it had taken him eight minutes and something like twenty seconds.
+Maybe a little change. He leaned against another tree and fished in his
+pocket for a cigarette. He lifted it out of its box and fished in his other
+pocket for his lighter, failing to find it. He searched his other pockets.
+He came to the realization that he had forgotten it in his Shack (in confusion
+over his True Vocation, he'd resorted to calling it simply the Shack until he
+could figure it out). He sighed and put his hands in his pockets.
+
+"I wonder if trees are protective of their young" he said to himself, then
+wondered if why he had to think his thoughts out loud, then remembered he
+always did this, then remembered his conversation with Jill. He hoped she
+didn't. He hoped that conversation was like the tree that fell in the forest
+with no one around. "I wonder if a thought said out loud isn't heard by
+anyone, if it was made. I think maybe this is what Literature (big L) is all
+about, if it's trying to make a connection because no idea matters unless it's
+connected to something else, or to someone else. Maybe no wood matters unless
+it's bound to another by upholstery nails. If 'the devil is in the details,'
+as they say (who are 'they' anyway?), the details are the connections? That
+doesn't make sense. Details are details. Connections are connections.
+
+"Still, a neuron by itself means nothing. Put them all together though and
+connect them. You've got a brain."
diff --git a/src/serengeti.txt b/src/serengeti.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cbac12a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/serengeti.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,33 @@
+---
+title: Serengeti
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+ title: Elegies for alternate selves
+ css: elegies
+ order: 20
+ prev:
+ title: The mountain
+ link: mountain
+ next:
+ title: The shipwright
+ link: shipwright
+...
+
+The self is a serengeti \
+a wide grassland with baobab trees \
+reaching their roots deep into earth \
+like a child into a clay pot \
+A wind blows there or seems to blow \
+if he holds it up to his ear the air shifts \
+like stones in a stream uncovering a crawfish \
+it finds another hiding place watching you \
+Its eyes are blacker than wind \
+on the serengeti they are the [eyes of a predator][formal] \
+they are coming toward you or receding \
+a storm cloud builds on the horizon \
+Are you [running][] toward the rain or away from it \
+Do you stand still and crouch hoping for silence
+
+[formal]: onformalpoetry.html
+[running]: squirrel.html
diff --git a/src/shed.txt b/src/shed.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f312cd4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/shed.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,35 @@
+---
+title: Shed
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+ title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+ css: paul
+ order: 9
+ next:
+ - title: Hands
+ link: hands
+ - title: Snow
+ link: snow
+ previous:
+ - title: Notes
+ link: notes
+ - title: Sapling
+ link: sapling
+...
+
+"What do you do all day in that shed out back" his mother asked one night
+while they ate dinner in front of the TV. "Write" he answered. "Write what"
+she asked in that way that means he'd better not say I don't know. "I don't
+know" he said.
+
+"Goddammit Paul" his mother said. "You're wasting your life out in that shed.
+You need to go out and get---" "I chop down trees too" he said. "I make
+furniture out of them." His mother's face did a Hitchcock zoom as she
+considered this new information. "Is it any good" she asked, eyes narrowed.
+
+"It's getting there" he answered. "I'm getting better every day." "When is
+it going to be there" she asked. "When are you going to sell this furniture
+of yours?" "It'll be a while" he answered.
+
+"Then you'd better get a job until then" she said.
diff --git a/src/shipwright.txt b/src/shipwright.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4de8e1d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/shipwright.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,37 @@
+---
+title: The shipwright
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+ title: Elegies for alternate selves
+ css: elegies
+ order: 21
+ prev:
+ title: Serengeti
+ link: serengeti
+ next:
+ title: Spittle
+ link: spittle
+...
+
+He builds a ship as if it were the last thing \
+holding him together, as if, when he stops, \
+his body will fall onto the plate-glass water \
+and shatter into sand. To keep his morale up \
+he whistles and sings, but the wind whistles [louder][] \
+and taunts him: Your ship will build itself \
+if you throw yourself into the sea; time \
+has a way of growing your beard for you. \
+Soon, you'll find yourself on a rocking chair \
+on some porch made from your ship's timbers. \
+The window behind you is made from a sail, thick \
+canvas, and no one inside will hear your calling \
+for milk or a chamberpot. Your children \
+will have all sailed to the New World and left you. \
+But he tries not to listen, continues to hammer \
+nail after nail into timber after timber, \
+but the wind [finally blows][] him into the growling ocean \
+and the ship falls apart on its own.
+
+[louder]: apollo11.html
+[finally blows]: theoceanoverflowswithcamels.html
diff --git a/src/snow.txt b/src/snow.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3bb250a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/snow.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,43 @@
+---
+title: Snow
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+ title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+ css: paul
+ order: 23
+ next:
+ - title: Reports
+ link: reports
+ - title: Stagnant
+ link: stagnant
+ previous:
+ - title: Man
+ link: man
+ - title: Shed
+ link: shed
+...
+
+_I don't care if they burn_ he wrote on his last blank notecard. He'd have to
+go to the Office Supply Store tomorrow after work.
+
+He looked at what he'd written. He'd been thinking about this for a while,
+felt the frustration build slowly like a thundercloud in the back of his mind.
+He thought he should write something else on the card, but everything he
+thought of seemed too confessional or too real compromising. He didn't want
+anyone, not even the notecards, to know what he was thinking. He decided to
+try for more of an interview with the paper.
+
+_Why?_ asked the notecard. _Because there is nothing important on any of
+them_ he wrote back. _What do you mean? You have some good stuff in that top
+drawer there._ He looked in the top drawer. It was stuffed full of notecards
+in no organization. He could see bits and pieces of thoughts like leaves
+crunched underfoot in autumn. _It will take so much organization_ he wrote.
+
+_Why is organization important? Remember the trees, how they formed rows
+without trying. No matter how the ideas fall, they make something. The snow
+does that too_ he wrote. _It doesn't try to make anything but it does._
+
+_No the snow is different_ the notecard was annoyed. _The snow is a blank
+canvas that humans build into shapes or doppelgangers. It makes nothing on
+its own._
diff --git a/src/spittle.txt b/src/spittle.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e1a72e6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/spittle.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,30 @@
+---
+title: Spittle
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+ title: Elegies for alternate selves
+ css: elegies
+ order: 22
+ prev:
+ title: The shipwright
+ link: shipwright
+ next:
+ title: The squirrel
+ link: squirrel
+...
+
+My body is attached to your body by a thin spittle of thought. \
+When you turn away from me, my thought is broken \
+and forms anew with something else. Ideas are drool. \
+Beauty has been slobbered over far too long. [God][] \
+is a tidal wave of bodily fluid. Even the flea has some \
+vestigial wetness. We live in a world fleshy and dark, \
+and moist as a nostril. Is conciousness only a watery-eyed \
+romantic, crying softly into his [shirt-sleeve][]? Is not reason \
+a square-jawed businessman with a briefcase full of memory? \
+I want to kiss the world to make it mine. I want to become \
+a Judas to reality, betray it with the wetness of emotion.
+
+[God]: howithappened.html
+[shirt-sleeve]: lovesong.html
diff --git a/src/squirrel.txt b/src/squirrel.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..68936f9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/squirrel.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,35 @@
+---
+title: The squirrel
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+ title: Elegies for alternate selves
+ css: elegies
+ order: 23
+ prev:
+ title: Spittle
+ link: spittle
+ next:
+ title: Swan song
+ link: swansong
+...
+
+He is so full in himself: \
+how far down the branch to run, \
+how long to jump, when to grab the air \
+and catch in it and turn, and land on branch \
+so gracefully it's like dying, alone \
+and warm in a bed next to a summer window \
+and the [birds singing][]. And on that branch there \
+is the squirrel dancing among the branches \
+and you think *What if he fell?* but he won't \
+because he's a squirrel and that's what \
+they do, [dance][] and never fall. It was erased \
+long ago from the squirrel, even \
+the possibility of falling was erased \
+from his being by the slow inexorable evolution \
+of squirrels, that is why all squirrels \
+are so full in themselves, full in who they are.
+
+[birds singing]: mountain.html
+[dance]: movingsideways.html
diff --git a/src/stagnant.txt b/src/stagnant.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6de7875
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/stagnant.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,39 @@
+---
+title: Stagnant
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+ title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+ css: paul
+ order: 27
+ next:
+ - title: Building
+ link: building
+ - title: Stump
+ link: stump
+ previous:
+ - title: Options
+ link: options
+ - title: Snow
+ link: snow
+...
+
+"Riding the bus to work is a good way to think or to read" Paul thought to
+himself on the bus ride to work. His thoughts couldn't become real to him
+because he didn't want to look insane to everyone else on the bus. His
+thoughts came to him like someone yelling over a hard wind. He was trying to
+write them on his memory but the act of writing was easier and more immediate
+than that of listening. He was afraid that when he looked at his memory later
+he wouldn't be able to read what was written.
+
+"Thoughts are like the wind outside a moving bus" he thought "or rather the
+bus is a brain slamming into columns of stagnant air causing them to whistle
+past in a confusion of something." He could barely hear the voice yelling to
+him over the wind. "Speak up" he thought to the voice, then remembered it was
+his own. He wished he'd remembered a book to read.
+
+He looked at his hands to pass the time. They were dry in the winter air that
+had seeped its way into the bus. He tried to figure out how many hours they
+would make it before cracking and bleeding. "Maybe three or four" he thought
+accidentally out loud. He looked around expecting stares from everyone on the
+seat. He was surprised that he was the only one on the bus.
diff --git a/src/statements-frag.txt b/src/statements-frag.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a3c40a1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/statements-frag.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,72 @@
+---
+title: Statements
+subtitle: a fragment
+genre: mixed
+
+project:
+ title: Autocento of the breakfast table
+ css: autocento
+...
+
+I. Eli {#i.-eli .unnumbered}
+------
+
+"Can one truly describe an emotion?" Eli asked me over the
+walkie-talkie. He was in the bathroom, & had taken the walkie-talkie in
+with him absent-mindedly. I could hear sounds of his piss hitting the
+toilet water.
+
+"I can hear you peeing," I said. He didn't answer so I said in apology,
+"It's okay. Humans are sexually dimorphic." I was sitting on my blue
+baby blanket texting Jon, who was funny and amicable over the phone. He
+made a three-message joke about greedy lawyers and I would have been
+laughing if not for my embarrassment toward Eli. He finally came out of
+the bathroom and kept his eyes straight ahead, toward the wall calendar
+and not at me, as he passed through the family room into his bedroom,
+were he shut the door quietly. Presently I heard some muffled noise as
+he turned on his iPod. I guessed he didn't feel like talking so I stayed
+on my blanket watching the Price is Right and texting Jon.
+
+Drew Carrey was doing his wrap-up speech on TV when Eli finally came out
+of his room, red puffy streaks covering his face. His eyes and nose were
+red too, which was almost festive against the pale green and white of
+the wallpaper. I had been laughing at the goofy costumes on the Price is
+Right and the jokes Jon was texting me, but when Eli came out of the
+room I stopped and just looked at him as well as I could. He was staring
+at my right shoulder as he said, "Go home now."
+
+"What?"
+
+"I said go home now. I don't want you here anymore, because I just
+remembered I have someone coming over and I have to clean."
+
+"Look, Eli, I'm sorry---"
+
+"It doesn't have anything to do with you, I swear. Just go, okay? Go
+home now."
+
+I got up and tried to give him a hug but he withdrew from me sharply. So
+I walked around the coffee table as he sat down, not looking at me
+anymore, and stared at the blank TV. The blanket I had been sitting in
+was crumpled next to him like a dead bird. I opened my mouth but thought
+better of talking, and closed the door behind me slowly.
+
+II. Dimorphic {#ii.-dimorphic .unnumbered}
+-------------
+
+Oranges. Poison. A compromise
+between Mary & Judas. Blue
+baby blankets swaddling greedy lawyers.
+
+Can one truly describe an emotion?
+I cut my ankle with a razor blade.
+I can only go one at a time. Humanity
+has a seething mass of eels
+for a brain, mating in the water so forcefully
+that it could drown you under the moon.
+
+III. Declaration of Poetry {#iii.-declaration-of-poetry .unnumbered}
+--------------------------
+
+You have to go one line at a time, and you have to start on the first or
+second line.
diff --git a/src/stump.txt b/src/stump.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aae6084
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/stump.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,41 @@
+---
+title: Stump
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+ title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+ css: paul
+ order: 34
+ next:
+ - title: Early
+ link: early
+ - title: Swear
+ link: swear
+ previous:
+ - title: Joke
+ link: joke
+ - title: Stagnant
+ link: stagnant
+...
+
+He walked into the woods for the first time in months. It was a bright summer
+day but under the canopy of leaves it was cool and quiet and twilight. There
+was no sound but his footsteps, his breathing. Instead of an axe, his right
+hand clutched his notebook. His left was in his pocket. A pencil perched
+behind his ear.
+
+He walked aimlessly until coming over a short rise he saw a stump. He
+recognized his handiwork in the way the stump made a kind of chair back---flat
+until the axe had gone through far enough, then a frayed edge like a torn
+page. Paul walked over to the stump and sat down.
+
+He looked up and tried to find a pattern in the placement of the trees. There
+was none. They grew randomly, beginning nowhere and ending in the same place.
+A squirrel ran down one and up another for no reason. He opened his notebook
+and took his pencil from his ear but could think of nothing to write.
+
+A crow called hoarsely to another, something important. Paul looked up but
+could not see the black bird in the leaves of the trees. He looked back down
+to the cream-colored pages of his notebook.
+
+He was surprised that he'd written _YOU CANNOT DISCOVER ART_.
diff --git a/src/swansong-alt.txt b/src/swansong-alt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e9a9eba
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/swansong-alt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,31 @@
+---
+title: Swansong
+subtitle: alternate version
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+ title: Autocento of the breakfast table
+ css: autocento
+...
+
+This poem is dry like chapped lips. \
+It is hard as teeth---hear the tapping? \
+It is the swan song of beauty, as all \
+swan songs are. Reading it, you are \
+puzzled, perhaps a little repulsed. \
+Swans do not have teeth, nor do they sing. \
+A honking over the cliff is all \
+they can do, and that they do \
+badly. You don't know where I'm going. \
+You want to tell me, You are not you. \
+You are the air the swan walks on. \
+You are the fringe of the curtain \
+that separates me from you. I say \
+that you are no longer the temple, \
+that you have been through fire \
+and are now less than ash. You are \
+the subtraction of yourself from \
+the world, the air without a swan. \
+Together, we are each other. You \
+and I have both nothing and everything \
+at once, we own the world and nothing in it.
diff --git a/src/swansong.txt b/src/swansong.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..80417f9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/swansong.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,35 @@
+---
+title: Swan song
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+ title: Elegies for alternate selves
+ css: elegies
+ order: 24
+ prev:
+ title: The squirrel
+ link: squirrel
+ next:
+ title: Telemarketer
+ link: telemarketer
+...
+
+Swans fly overhead singing goodbye \
+to we [walkers of the earth][ithappened]. You point \
+to them in formation, you tell me \
+you are not you. You are the air the swans \
+walk on as they journey like pilgrims \
+to a temple in the south. A curtain \
+there separates me from you, swans \
+from the air they fly through. I say \
+that you are no longer the temple, \
+that you have been through fire \
+and are now less than ash. You are \
+a [mirror][] of me, the [air without a swan][trumpet]. \
+Together, we are each other. You \
+and I have both nothing and everything \
+at once. We own the world and nothing in it.
+
+[ithappened]: howithappened.html
+[mirror]: moongone.html
+[trumpet]: deathstrumpet.html
diff --git a/src/swear.txt b/src/swear.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3dc80d7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/swear.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,58 @@
+---
+title: Swear
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+ title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+ css: paul
+ order: 25
+ next:
+ - title: Options
+ link: options
+ - title: Tapestry
+ link: tapestry
+ previous:
+ - title: Reports
+ link: reports
+ - title: Stump
+ link: stump
+...
+
+```type
+EVERYTHING CHANGES OR EVERYTHING
+STAYS THE SAME
+
+First, a history: I was writing my
+thoughts in a book. I got a typewriter
+and typing things in a book
+became impossible. I began typing
+on 4x6 notecards. I ran out of
+ribbon in my typewriter. I wrote
+on the 4x6 notecards. I bought a
+new ribbon and new notecards. Now
+again I am typing on notecards.
+ What have I been typing?
+Thoughts, impressions maybe, a log
+of changes to my mental state. I
+waited long enough and I began
+recording them in the same way. If
+I wait longer the ribbon will run
+out again and I'll write again, on
+notecards or in my book. The same
+thoughts in different bodies.
+ That's what it means, "Every
+thing changes or everything stays
+the same." It might as well be
+"and." Local differences add up to
+global identities. It's a hoop,
+right? And we keep going around
+and we think it's flat but it's
+round like the Earth.
+```
+
+Paul pushed his chair away from the Writing Desk and stared at the notecard.
+He stood up, knocked his head on the lightbulb, swore. He pulled the notecard
+from his typewriter and crumpled it up with his left hand. With his right hand
+he reached in his pocket and pulled out his cigarettes. He put one in his
+mouth, threw the paper in the corner, grabbed his axe, went out into the
+woods.
diff --git a/src/tapestry.txt b/src/tapestry.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab87e19
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/tapestry.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,42 @@
+---
+title: Tapestry
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+ title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+ css: paul
+ order: 17
+ next:
+ - title: Window
+ link: window
+ - title: Toilet
+ link: toilet
+ previous:
+ - title: Phone
+ link: phone
+ - title: Swear
+ link: swear
+...
+
+_Apparently typewriters need ribbon. Apparently ribbon is incredibly hard to
+find anymore because no one uses typewriters. Apparently I am writing my
+hymns from now on._ So he was back to calling his notes "hymns." He looked
+up "hymns" in the dictionary. It said that a hymn was "an ode or song of
+praise or adoration." Praise or adoration to what? he asked himself. He
+thought maybe furniture. There was still a lot of notfurniture in what he was
+again calling his Writing Shack.
+
+The dictionary also had this to say about "hymn": that it was possibly related
+to the old Greek word for "weave." "Weave what" Paul wondered to himself. He
+wrote this down on a new notecard. _Apparently "hymn" means weave somehow.
+Or it used to. Or its cousin did. What is it weaving? Who is it weaving for?
+I remember in school we talked about Odysseus and his wife Penelope, who wove
+a tapestry every day just to take it apart at night. I forget why._
+
+_Maybe she wove the tapestry for Odysseus. Maybe she wove it for herself.
+What did she weave it of? Memory, maybe? Or dream? I think these words make
+a kind of tapestry, or at least the thread it will be made of. I will weave a
+hymn to the gods of Literature, out of fiction. My furniture was a try at
+weaving, but I am shit at furniture. So writing it is again._
+
+He wrote _**NOTES FOR A HYMN**_ at the top of this notecard.
diff --git a/src/telemarketer.txt b/src/telemarketer.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e43b87c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/telemarketer.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,87 @@
+---
+title: Telemarketer
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+ title: Elegies for alternate selves
+ css: elegies
+ order: 25
+ prev:
+ title: Swan song
+ link: swansong
+ next:
+ title: We played those games too
+ link: weplayedthosegamestoo
+...
+
+It was one of those nameless gray buildings that could be seen from the
+street only if Larry craned his neck to almost vertical. He never had,
+of course, having heard when he first arrived in the city that only
+tourists unaccustomed to tall buildings did so. He'd never thought about
+it until he'd heard the social injunction against such a thing; it was
+now one of the things he thought about almost every day as he rode to
+and from work in gritty blue buses.
+
+Inside the building, the constant sound of recirculating dry air made
+Larry feel as though he were at some beach in hell, listening to the
+[ocean][], or more accurately at a gift shop in a landlocked state in hell
+listening to the ocean as represented by the sound a conch shell makes
+when he holds it up to his ear. The buzz of the fluorescent bulbs
+overhead sounded like the hot sun bearing down all day in this metaphor,
+a favorite of Larry's.
+
+His cubicle was made of that cheap, grayish-blue plywood that cubicles
+are made of; inside it, his computer sat on his desk as Larry liked to
+think an [eagle perched][] on a mountainous crag much like the crag that was
+his desktop wallpaper. The walls were unadorned except for a few
+tacked-up papers in report covers explaining his script. When Larry made
+a call to a potential customer it always went the same way:
+
+"Hi, Mr/Mrs (customer's name). My name is Larry and I'm with (client's
+name), and was just wondering if I could have a minute of your time?"
+
+"Oh, no, sir; I don't want whatever it is you're selling." (customer
+terminates call).
+
+Larry had only ever read the first line of the script on the wall.
+Sometimes he had an urge to read more of it, to be ready when a customer
+expressed interest in whatever it was Larry was selling, but something
+in him---he liked to think it was an actor's intuition that told him it
+was best to improvise, though he worried it was the futility of it---kept
+him from reading further into the script. So when Jane said, "Sure, I
+have nothing better to do," he was thrown completely off guard.
+
+"Um, alright Mrs ... Mrs. Loring, I was wondering---"
+
+"It's Ms, not Mrs. Em ess. Miz. No ‘r,' Larry." She sounded patient, as
+if she were used to correcting people about the particulars of her
+title. But how often can that happen? Larry thought, and he was suddenly
+deeply confused.
+
+"Oh, sorry, ma'am, uh, Miz Loring, but I wanted to know whether you'd like to,
+ah, buy some..." Larry put his head in his hand and started twirling his hair
+in his finger, a nervous habit he'd had since childhood, and closed his eyes
+tightly. "Why don't you have anything better to do?"
+
+Immediately he knew it was the wrong question. Even before the silence
+on the other end moved past impatience and into stunned, Larry had a
+mini-drama written and staged within his mind: she would call customer
+service and complain loudly into the representative's ear. The rep would
+send a memo to the head of telemarketing requesting disciplinary action,
+and the head would delegate the action to Larry's immediate supervisor,
+David. David would saunter over to Larry's cubicle sometime within the
+next week, depending on when he got the memo and when he felt like
+crossing fifty feet of office space, and have one of what David liked to
+call "chats" but what Larry knew were lectures. After about half an hour
+of "chatting" David would give Larry a warning and ask him to come in
+for overtime to make up for the discretion, and walk back slowly to his
+office, making small talk with the cubicled workers on the way. The
+world suddenly felt too small for Larry, or he too big for it.
+
+Quietly, with the same patience but with a [bigger pain][], Jane said, "My
+husband just left me and I thought you could take my mind off of him for
+just a minute," and hung up.
+
+[ocean]: theoceanoverflowswithcamels.html
+[eagle perched]: mountain.html
+[bigger pain]: arspoetica.html
diff --git a/src/theoceanoverflowswithcamels.txt b/src/theoceanoverflowswithcamels.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..94ba2a0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/theoceanoverflowswithcamels.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
+---
+title: The ocean overflows with camels
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+ title: Elegies for alternate selves
+ css: elegies
+ order: 7
+ prev:
+ title: Ars poetica
+ link: arspoetica
+ next:
+ title: The boar
+ link: boar
+...
+
+We found your [shirt][] deep in the dark water, \
+caught on the clothesline of sleeping pills. \
+Your head on the shore was streaming tears \
+like sleeves or the coronas of saints saved \
+from fire. The burning bush began crying \
+like a child who misses his mother. Traffic \
+slammed shut like an eye. God's mean [left hook][] \
+knocked us out, and we began swimming. \
+Bruises bloomed like algae on a lake. \
+Your [father][] beat your chest and screamed \
+for someone to open a window. The air \
+stopped breathing. Fish clogged its gills. \
+Birds sang too loudly, trying to drown out \
+your father's cries, but all their sweetness \
+was not enough. No polite noises will be made \
+anymore, he told us, clawing your breastbone. \
+He opened your heart to air again. Camels \
+flowed from you both like water from the rock. \
+God spoke up, but nobody listened to him. \
+We hung you up on the line to dry.
+
+[shirt]: lovesong.html
+[left hook]: roughgloves.html
+[father]: angeltoabraham.html
diff --git a/src/todaniel.txt b/src/todaniel.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6e39f78
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/todaniel.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,36 @@
+---
+title: To Daniel
+subtitle: an elaboration of a previous comment
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+ title: Elegies for alternate selves
+ css: elegies
+ order: 27
+ prev:
+ title: We played those games too
+ link: weplayedthosegamestoo
+ next:
+ title: "Death's trumpet"
+ link: deathstrumpet
+...
+
+There are more modern ideals of beauty \
+than yours, young padowan. Jessica has \
+some assets, that I'll give you easily, \
+but in my women I prefer pizzazz.
+
+I don't want to bring you down, or make you think \
+[that your perfected woman isn't so][trumpet]. \
+It's just that, like Adam said, 2006 \
+has come and gone. What did she do
+
+in that year anyway? IMDB \
+has, surprisingly, none, though in '05 \
+she's in four titles. Sin City \
+I've never seen, although from many I've
+
+heard it's good. But it's still irrelevant--- \
+no matter how comely, she lacks talent.
+
+[trumpet]: deathstrumpet.html
diff --git a/src/toilet.txt b/src/toilet.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..90ae836
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/toilet.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,36 @@
+---
+title: Toilet
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+ title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+ css: paul
+ order: 11
+ next:
+ - title: Leg
+ link: leg
+ - title: Toothpaste
+ link: toothpaste
+ previous:
+ - title: Hands
+ link: hands
+ - title: Tapestry
+ link: tapestry
+...
+
+Paul only did his reading on the toilet.
+
+He read in a magazine that the universe as we know it is actually a hologram,
+a three-dimensional projection of a lower, two-dimensional, "realer" reality.
+The article said that this model explains things like quantum entanglement,
+what it called "spooky action at a distance."
+
+After he finished, he ran back out to his Writing Shack and hammered out a
+Treatise on Literature as Spooky Action. His mind was reeling. He typed out
+an entire notecard on the subject.
+
+He stopped to catch his breath. Reading it over, he realized he was
+completely wrong. "Paper is made from trees" he thought "and so is
+furniture." He had thought that ART and CRAFT were two separate enterprises
+but he realized in a flash that they were two sides of the same building.
+Were there other walls?
diff --git a/src/toothpaste.txt b/src/toothpaste.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f8cd231
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/toothpaste.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
+---
+title: Toothpaste
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+ title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+ css: paul
+ order: 36
+ next:
+ - title: Father
+ link: father
+ - title: Treatise
+ link: treatise
+ previous:
+ - title: Early
+ link: early
+ - title: Toilet
+ link: toilet
+...
+
+He couldn't find a shirt to go to work in. They all had stains on them
+somewhere. He pulled out a vest to put on over the stains but somehow all of
+them were still visible. Most of them were unidentifiable but one he thought
+could have come from that peach he ate two weeks before. Another looked like
+toothpaste but he was paranoid it was something else.
+
+When he took the bus into work he couldn't relax. He was paranoid everyone
+was staring at his stain and kept looking out the corners of his eyes to make
+sure they weren't. They didn't seem to be but they could also be looking away
+just as he looked at them. "The Observation Paradox" he muttered to himself.
+
+Jill was the only one to notice the stain at work. She came around to his
+cubicle during a break because he dared not show his stain in the break room.
+"You have a stain on your shoulder" she said "it looks like toothpaste." "Do
+I" he feigned ignorance but went red at the same time "I didn't see that there
+this morning." "How do you get toothpaste on your shoulder?" "I don't know
+skills I guess" he said and she grinned. "You know vinegar will take that
+out" she said "although I think I like it. You should start a museum of shirt
+stains!" "I don't have that many shirts with stains" he said frowning. "Yes
+you do" she said.
diff --git a/src/treatise.txt b/src/treatise.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8312be4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/treatise.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,62 @@
+---
+title: Treatise
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+ title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+ css: paul
+ order: 15
+ next:
+ - title: Phone
+ link: phone
+ - title: Underwear
+ link: underwear
+ previous:
+ - title: Hardware
+ link: hardware
+ - title: Toothpaste
+ link: toothpaste
+...
+
+```type
+TREATISE ON LITERATURE AS "SPOOKY
+ACTION FROM A DISTANCE"
+
+There is this thing called "spooky
+action at a distance." Einstein
+mentioned it first I believe. It
+is about how two electrons can act
+like they are right next to each
+other although they are very far
+away (lightyears even). For a long
+time this puzzled scientists until
+someone (not Einstein) figured out
+that maybe the universe is a
+hologram or projection. So what
+appears to be very far apart in
+the hologram might actually be
+very close in the substrate
+reality.
+ I want to talk about this
+effect in literature. In literature
+the writer writes words on a
+substrate (paper) and later the
+reader reads the same words off
+the substrate. Although the writer
+and reader might be very far apart
+from each other in time and space,
+they experience the same effect
+from reading the words. Even the
+writer reading his own words after
+he has written them becomes a
+reader and feels who he was at
+that time, like a ghost.
+
+PROBLEMS:
+ Maybe the substrate isn't
+paper it's what the writing is
+about. Where is the hologram? Are
+physics and literature comparable?
+What if the universe isn't a
+hologram what then?
+```
diff --git a/src/underwear.txt b/src/underwear.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7caedd9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/underwear.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
+---
+title: Underwear
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+ title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+ css: paul
+ order: 3
+ next:
+ - title: Dream
+ link: dream
+ - title: Wallpaper
+ link: wallpaper
+ previous:
+ - title: Hymnal
+ link: hymnal
+ - title: Treatise
+ link: treatise
+...
+
+He dropped the penny in the dryer, turned it on, and turned around. "What" he
+called upstairs, pretending not to hear his mother's question over the noise
+of the dryer. He had heard her ask "Could you bring up my underwear from the
+dryer" but didn't want to touch her underwear any more than he had to. "I
+don't want to bring up your underwear" he said to himself, and walked back
+upstairs as his mother was calling down again for her underwear.
+
+"Did you get them" she asked when he opened the basement door to the kitchen.
+She was sitting at the table playing dominoes. "Get what" he asked. She
+peered at him and said "my underwear."
+
+"Oh I didn't see them" he answered. He reflexively opened the refrigerator,
+reflexively bent down, reflexively tried to feign non-disappointment
+(appointment? he thought) at seeing the same disappointing empty pickle jar,
+old head of lettuce, crusty mayonnaise he'd seen already on the way down to
+switch his laundry over. "Paul" she said in that way that means Look at me.
+Paul looked at her.
+
+"You had to get them out of the dryer to put your clothes in. Where did you
+put them?"
diff --git a/src/wallpaper.txt b/src/wallpaper.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..45de63c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/wallpaper.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
+---
+title: Wallpaper
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+ title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+ css: paul
+ order: 31
+ next:
+ - title: Punch
+ link: punch
+ - title: Window
+ link: window
+ previous:
+ - title: X-ray
+ link: x-ray
+ - title: Underwear
+ link: underwear
+...
+
+
+He didn't go back into the shed for a long time. His hatchet was in there,
+and his axe. He didn't want to face them. His papers, he decided, could wait
+in the top drawer for a while before being looked at again. The pain
+medication made him loopy. He couldn't think as well as he was used to, which
+wasn't well to begin with. Even saying his thoughts out loud, it was as
+though they were on the TV in the next room. Someone was cheering. They had
+just won a car.
+
+His mother came in with lunch on a tray. It was hot tomato soup and a grilled
+cheese sandwich. "What have you been doing all day" she asked "you haven't
+just been staring at the wall have you?" He had been staring at the wall most
+of the day. The wall without the window on it, with the woodgrain wallpaper.
+"No" he said. "What have you been doing then" she asked setting the tray down
+on his lap. He sat up and almost upset it, but she caught it before it
+spilled anything. "Composing in my head" he lied. "A novel of my
+experience."
+
+"Do you really think anyone will want to read about you" she asked and walked
+out of the room.
diff --git a/src/weplayedthosegamestoo.txt b/src/weplayedthosegamestoo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e73dc75
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/weplayedthosegamestoo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
+---
+title: We played those games too
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+ title: Elegies for alternate selves
+ css: elegies
+ order: 25
+ prev:
+ title: Telemarketer
+ link: telemarketer
+ next:
+ title: 'To Daniel: an elaboration'
+ link: todaniel
+...
+
+I saw two Eskimo girls playing a game \
+blowing on each other's' vocal chords to make music \
+on the tundra. I thought about how \
+once we played the same game \
+and the sounds blowing over the chords of our throats \
+was the same as a wind over frozen prairie. \
+We are the Eskimo girls who played \
+the game that night to keep ourselves warm. \
+I run my hands over [my daughter][]'s \
+voicebox as she hums a song \
+about a seal and about killing the seal and about \
+skinning it and rendering the blubber \
+into clear oil to light lamps. \
+I remember you are my lamp. She remembers \
+you although you left before she arrived. \
+I can never tell her about you. \
+I will never be able to express that taste of your oil \
+as we [pushed our throats together][spittle]. \
+I will never be able to say how \
+we share this blemish like conjoined twins. \
+I will fail you always to remember you.
+
+[my daughter]: and.html
+[spittle]: spittle.html
diff --git a/src/window.txt b/src/window.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5df7dc5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/window.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,42 @@
+---
+title: Window
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+ title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+ css: paul
+ order: 18
+ next:
+ - title: Question
+ link: question
+ - title: Writing
+ link: writing
+ previous:
+ - title: Tapestry
+ link: tapestry
+ - title: Wallpaper
+ link: wallpaper
+...
+
+_**HYMN 386: JOKES**_
+
+_"Tell us a joke" everyone asks of the clown. He sits on a log and begins to
+think. Everyone waits gap-mouthed in anticipation. A slight breeze ruffles
+the clown's coat, his pompom buttons, his bright red hair. His nose becomes
+redder in the cold. Hours pass. All but the most dedicated of joke listeners
+leave him to rot ~~for all they may care~~._
+
+_The clown opens his mouth to speak but no words come out. A tear falls down
+his cheek, and another. He begins to sob. The last joke listener comes over
+to comfort him. She puts a hand on his shoulder. He looks up at her, red
+face, red nose, white lips, and says ~~"Thank you."~~ He vanishes from the
+clearing. The last joke listener sits on the log and looks up at the sky.
+The moon is full. The world creaks on its axis._
+
+Paul looked up to the space on the wall where a window should be. The shadow
+of his face wavered in the candle light. He looked back down at the card he'd
+been writing on. He read the card. He crossed out the _for all they may
+care_ in the first paragraph, and _"Thank you"_ from the second one. "What
+could he say" he thought to himself. "What could he possibly say to her." He
+went outside to clear his head with a cigarette. He took his axe with him
+this time.
diff --git a/src/words-meaning.txt b/src/words-meaning.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ee87ad0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/words-meaning.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,60 @@
+---
+title: Words and meaning
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+ title: Elegies for alternate selves
+ css: elegies
+ order: 4
+ prev:
+ title: And
+ link: and
+ next:
+ title: On seeing the panorama of the Apollo 11 landing site
+ link: apollo11
+...
+
+"How astonishing it is that language can almost mean, / and frightening
+that it does not quite," Jack Gilbert opens his poem "The Forgotten
+Dialect of the Heart." In a similar vein, Hass's "Meditation at
+Legunitas" states, "A word is elegy to what it signifies." These poems
+get to the heart of language, and express the old duality of thought: by
+giving a word to an entity, it is both tethered and made meaningful.
+
+Words are the inevitable byproduct of an analytic mind. Humans are
+constantly classifying and reclassifying ideas, objects, animals,
+people, into ten thousand arbitrary categories. A favorite saying of
+mine is that "Everything is everything," a tautology that I like,
+because it gets to the core of the human linguistic machine, and because
+every time I say it people think I'm being [disingenuous][]. But what I mean
+by "everything is everything" is that there is a continuity to existence
+that works beyond, or rather underneath, our capacity to understand it
+through language. Language by definition compartmentalizes reality, sets
+this bit apart from that bit, sets up boundaries as to what is and is
+not a stone, a leaf, a door. Most of the time I think of language as
+limiting, as defining a thing as the [inverse of everything][] is not.
+
+In this way, "everything is everything" becomes "everything is nothing,"
+which is another thing I like to say and something that pisses people
+off. To me, infinity and zero are the same, two ways of looking at the
+same point on the circle–of numbers, of the universe, whatever. Maybe
+it's because I wear an analogue watch, and so my view of time is
+cyclical, or maybe it's some brain trauma I had in vitro, but whatever it
+is that's how I see the world, because I'm working against the
+limitations that language sets upon us. I think that's the role of the
+poet, or of any artist: to take the over-expansive experience of
+existing and to boil it down, boil and boil away until there is the
+ultimate concentrate at the center that is what the poem talks around,
+at, etc., but never of, because it is ultimately made of language and
+cannot get to it. A poem is getting as close as possible to the speed of
+light, to absolute zero, to God, while knowing that it can't get all the
+way there, and never will. A poem is doing this and coming back and
+showing what happened as it happened. Exegesis is hard because a really
+good poem will be just that, it will be the most basic and best way to
+say what it's saying, so attempts to say the same thing differently will
+fail. A poem is a kernel of existence. It is a description of the
+kernel. [It is][].
+
+[disingenuous]: likingthings.html
+[inverse of everything]: i-am.html
+[It is]: arspoetica.html
diff --git a/src/writing.txt b/src/writing.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4be9d0b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/writing.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,35 @@
+---
+title: Writing
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+ title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+ css: paul
+ order: 7
+ next:
+ - title: Notes
+ link: notes
+ - title: X-ray
+ link: x-ray
+ previous:
+ - title: Leaf
+ link: leaf
+ - title: Window
+ link: window
+...
+
+He sat down at his writing desk and removed his new pen from its plastic
+wrapping. He remembered how to fill it from _The View from Saturday_, which
+he'd read as a kid. It had been one of his favorite books. He remembered the
+heart puzzle they completed, the origin of the word "posh," and most of all
+his fourth-grade teacher Ms. (Mrs? He could never remember) Samovar. He
+smiled as he opened the lid on the ink well he'd just bought.
+
+He dipped his pen in the inkwell, screwed the converter piston up, and watched
+as nothing entered the chamber. He screwed it back down and up again, while
+dipping the nib more deeply into the ink well. He watched as again nothing
+filled the capsule. He screwed it down a third time. His thumb knocked the
+inkwell over somehow by accident.
+
+As he swore, stood up and away from the table, and went into the house proper
+for paper towels, he resolved to buy a typewriter.
diff --git a/src/x-ray.txt b/src/x-ray.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..19c03e0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/x-ray.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,44 @@
+---
+title: X-ray
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+ title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+ css: paul
+ order: 30
+ next:
+ - title: Wallpaper
+ link: wallpaper
+ - title: Yellow
+ link: yellow
+ previous:
+ - title: Yellow
+ link: yellow
+ - title: Writing
+ link: writing
+...
+
+While chopping a tree in the woods with his hatchet (a Christmas gift from his
+mother) a bird he'd never heard before cried out. He jerked his head up and
+to the right as the hatchet fell down and to the left. It cut deep into the
+back of his left hand. A low thud didn't echo in the forest because all the
+needles and snow absorbed ~~sound well~~ the sound.
+
+When he got back to the house his hand wrapped in the end of his shirt he
+still felt no pain. He called for his mother and found her watching TV in the
+main room. He stayed in the kitchen not wanting to get blood on the carpet.
+She turned around cigarette dangling from her open mouth said "Oh god what
+happened."
+
+She drove him to the hospital in the car. The radio stayed off the entire
+way. Paul wanted to turn it on but ~~he didn't want~~ the desire not to annoy
+his mother was stronger. They drove in silence.
+
+At the hospital after the X-rays and stitching and pain medication
+prescription the doctor said "You got lucky, son. If that axe had hit a
+half-inch lower you'd have lost your hand. You won't get full mobility back
+because we had to tie the tendons, but with therapy you should be able to work
+it pretty well."
+
+On the drive back home all he could think was that he was glad he didn't hit
+his writing hand.
diff --git a/src/yellow.txt b/src/yellow.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..693e76f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/yellow.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
+---
+title: Yellow
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+ title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+ css: paul
+ order: 29
+ next:
+ - title: X-ray
+ link: x-ray
+ previous:
+ - title: Building
+ link: building
+ - title: X-ray
+ link: x-ray
+...
+
+He would enter data at work for fifty minutes and then go on break. He would
+walk down the hallway to the breakroom, which had a white refrigerator, a
+black microwave on a brown plyboard cart stocked with powdered creamer, sugar,
+and swizzle sticks, a dark red coffee maker, and yellow paint on the wall.
+He'd remember that somewhere he'd read an article about yellow walls being
+calming. "They use yellow in asylums" he'd say to himself.
+
+He would sit down at the round table covered in newspapers that took up the
+half of the room not occupied by the refrigerator, microwave, or counter with
+coffee pot and sink. He didn't drink coffee but he would think about
+starting. He would shuffle the newspapers around on the table and see they
+were all the same ones as an hour ago. "Or technically fifty minutes ago" he
+would say to himself. Sometimes Jill would come in for a cup of coffee. She
+would always check that her lunch, which she brought each morning in a
+Tupperware container with a blue lid with her name written on it in black
+sharpie, was still there. Once he asked her why she checked.
+
+"Why do you always check if your lunch is in the fridge" he asked. "I don't"
+she said. "Oh I thought you did." "I don't think so." "Why do you check at
+all?" "Once it was stolen out of the fridge and returned empty before I had a
+chance to eat my lunch" she said. "So you make sure it won't happen again."
+"No I'm waiting for the day that it does."
diff --git a/stagnant.html b/stagnant.html
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1836434
--- /dev/null
+++ b/stagnant.html
@@ -0,0 +1,39 @@
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ Stagnant | Autocento of the breakfast table
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
Stagnant
+
+
+
+
+
“Riding the bus to work is a good way to think or to read” Paul thought to himself on the bus ride to work. His thoughts couldn’t become real to him because he didn’t want to look insane to everyone else on the bus. His thoughts came to him like someone yelling over a hard wind. He was trying to write them on his memory but the act of writing was easier and more immediate than that of listening. He was afraid that when he looked at his memory later he wouldn’t be able to read what was written.
+
“Thoughts are like the wind outside a moving bus” he thought “or rather the bus is a brain slamming into columns of stagnant air causing them to whistle past in a confusion of something.” He could barely hear the voice yelling to him over the wind. “Speak up” he thought to the voice, then remembered it was his own. He wished he’d remembered a book to read.
+
He looked at his hands to pass the time. They were dry in the winter air that had seeped its way into the bus. He tried to figure out how many hours they would make it before cracking and bleeding. “Maybe three or four” he thought accidentally out loud. He looked around expecting stares from everyone on the seat. He was surprised that he was the only one on the bus.
“Can one truly describe an emotion?” Eli asked me over the walkie-talkie. He was in the bathroom, & had taken the walkie-talkie in with him absent-mindedly. I could hear sounds of his piss hitting the toilet water.
+
“I can hear you peeing,” I said. He didn’t answer so I said in apology, “It’s okay. Humans are sexually dimorphic.” I was sitting on my blue baby blanket texting Jon, who was funny and amicable over the phone. He made a three-message joke about greedy lawyers and I would have been laughing if not for my embarrassment toward Eli. He finally came out of the bathroom and kept his eyes straight ahead, toward the wall calendar and not at me, as he passed through the family room into his bedroom, were he shut the door quietly. Presently I heard some muffled noise as he turned on his iPod. I guessed he didn’t feel like talking so I stayed on my blanket watching the Price is Right and texting Jon.
+
Drew Carrey was doing his wrap-up speech on TV when Eli finally came out of his room, red puffy streaks covering his face. His eyes and nose were red too, which was almost festive against the pale green and white of the wallpaper. I had been laughing at the goofy costumes on the Price is Right and the jokes Jon was texting me, but when Eli came out of the room I stopped and just looked at him as well as I could. He was staring at my right shoulder as he said, “Go home now.”
+
“What?”
+
“I said go home now. I don’t want you here anymore, because I just remembered I have someone coming over and I have to clean.”
+
“Look, Eli, I’m sorry—”
+
“It doesn’t have anything to do with you, I swear. Just go, okay? Go home now.”
+
I got up and tried to give him a hug but he withdrew from me sharply. So I walked around the coffee table as he sat down, not looking at me anymore, and stared at the blank TV. The blanket I had been sitting in was crumpled next to him like a dead bird. I opened my mouth but thought better of talking, and closed the door behind me slowly.
+
II. Dimorphic
+
Oranges. Poison. A compromise between Mary & Judas. Blue baby blankets swaddling greedy lawyers.
+
Can one truly describe an emotion? I cut my ankle with a razor blade. I can only go one at a time. Humanity has a seething mass of eels for a brain, mating in the water so forcefully that it could drown you under the moon.
+
III. Declaration of Poetry
+
You have to go one line at a time, and you have to start on the first or second line.
He walked into the woods for the first time in months. It was a bright summer day but under the canopy of leaves it was cool and quiet and twilight. There was no sound but his footsteps, his breathing. Instead of an axe, his right hand clutched his notebook. His left was in his pocket. A pencil perched behind his ear.
+
He walked aimlessly until coming over a short rise he saw a stump. He recognized his handiwork in the way the stump made a kind of chair back—flat until the axe had gone through far enough, then a frayed edge like a torn page. Paul walked over to the stump and sat down.
+
He looked up and tried to find a pattern in the placement of the trees. There was none. They grew randomly, beginning nowhere and ending in the same place. A squirrel ran down one and up another for no reason. He opened his notebook and took his pencil from his ear but could think of nothing to write.
+
A crow called hoarsely to another, something important. Paul looked up but could not see the black bird in the leaves of the trees. He looked back down to the cream-colored pages of his notebook.
+
He was surprised that he’d written YOU CANNOT DISCOVER ART.
This poem is dry like chapped lips. It is hard as teeth—hear the tapping? It is the swan song of beauty, as all swan songs are. Reading it, you are puzzled, perhaps a little repulsed. Swans do not have teeth, nor do they sing. A honking over the cliff is all they can do, and that they do badly. You don’t know where I’m going. You want to tell me, You are not you. You are the air the swan walks on. You are the fringe of the curtain that separates me from you. I say that you are no longer the temple, that you have been through fire and are now less than ash. You are the subtraction of yourself from the world, the air without a swan. Together, we are each other. You and I have both nothing and everything at once, we own the world and nothing in it.
Swans fly overhead singing goodbye to we walkers of the earth. You point to them in formation, you tell me you are not you. You are the air the swans walk on as they journey like pilgrims to a temple in the south. A curtain there separates me from you, swans from the air they fly through. I say that you are no longer the temple, that you have been through fire and are now less than ash. You are a mirror of me, the air without a swan. Together, we are each other. You and I have both nothing and everything at once. We own the world and nothing in it.
EVERYTHING CHANGES OR EVERYTHING
+ STAYS THE SAME
+
+ First, a history: I was writing my
+ thoughts in a book. I got a typewriter
+ and typing things in a book
+ became impossible. I began typing
+ on 4x6 notecards. I ran out of
+ ribbon in my typewriter. I wrote
+ on the 4x6 notecards. I bought a
+ new ribbon and new notecards. Now
+ again I am typing on notecards.
+ What have I been typing?
+ Thoughts, impressions maybe, a log
+ of changes to my mental state. I
+ waited long enough and I began
+ recording them in the same way. If
+ I wait longer the ribbon will run
+ out again and I'll write again, on
+ notecards or in my book. The same
+ thoughts in different bodies.
+ That's what it means, "Every
+ thing changes or everything stays
+ the same." It might as well be
+ "and." Local differences add up to
+ global identities. It's a hoop,
+ right? And we keep going around
+ and we think it's flat but it's
+ round like the Earth.
+
Paul pushed his chair away from the Writing Desk and stared at the notecard. He stood up, knocked his head on the lightbulb, swore. He pulled the notecard from his typewriter and crumpled it up with his left hand. With his right hand he reached in his pocket and pulled out his cigarettes. He put one in his mouth, threw the paper in the corner, grabbed his axe, went out into the woods.
Apparently typewriters need ribbon. Apparently ribbon is incredibly hard to find anymore because no one uses typewriters. Apparently I am writing my hymns from now on. So he was back to calling his notes “hymns.” He looked up “hymns” in the dictionary. It said that a hymn was “an ode or song of praise or adoration.” Praise or adoration to what? he asked himself. He thought maybe furniture. There was still a lot of notfurniture in what he was again calling his Writing Shack.
+
The dictionary also had this to say about “hymn”: that it was possibly related to the old Greek word for “weave.” “Weave what” Paul wondered to himself. He wrote this down on a new notecard. Apparently “hymn” means weave somehow. Or it used to. Or its cousin did. What is it weaving? Who is it weaving for? I remember in school we talked about Odysseus and his wife Penelope, who wove a tapestry every day just to take it apart at night. I forget why.
+
Maybe she wove the tapestry for Odysseus. Maybe she wove it for herself. What did she weave it of? Memory, maybe? Or dream? I think these words make a kind of tapestry, or at least the thread it will be made of. I will weave a hymn to the gods of Literature, out of fiction. My furniture was a try at weaving, but I am shit at furniture. So writing it is again.
+
He wrote NOTES FOR A HYMN at the top of this notecard.
It was one of those nameless gray buildings that could be seen from the street only if Larry craned his neck to almost vertical. He never had, of course, having heard when he first arrived in the city that only tourists unaccustomed to tall buildings did so. He’d never thought about it until he’d heard the social injunction against such a thing; it was now one of the things he thought about almost every day as he rode to and from work in gritty blue buses.
+
Inside the building, the constant sound of recirculating dry air made Larry feel as though he were at some beach in hell, listening to the ocean, or more accurately at a gift shop in a landlocked state in hell listening to the ocean as represented by the sound a conch shell makes when he holds it up to his ear. The buzz of the fluorescent bulbs overhead sounded like the hot sun bearing down all day in this metaphor, a favorite of Larry’s.
+
His cubicle was made of that cheap, grayish-blue plywood that cubicles are made of; inside it, his computer sat on his desk as Larry liked to think an eagle perched on a mountainous crag much like the crag that was his desktop wallpaper. The walls were unadorned except for a few tacked-up papers in report covers explaining his script. When Larry made a call to a potential customer it always went the same way:
+
“Hi, Mr/Mrs (customer’s name). My name is Larry and I’m with (client’s name), and was just wondering if I could have a minute of your time?”
+
“Oh, no, sir; I don’t want whatever it is you’re selling.” (customer terminates call).
+
Larry had only ever read the first line of the script on the wall. Sometimes he had an urge to read more of it, to be ready when a customer expressed interest in whatever it was Larry was selling, but something in him—he liked to think it was an actor’s intuition that told him it was best to improvise, though he worried it was the futility of it—kept him from reading further into the script. So when Jane said, “Sure, I have nothing better to do,” he was thrown completely off guard.
+
“Um, alright Mrs … Mrs. Loring, I was wondering—”
+
“It’s Ms, not Mrs. Em ess. Miz. No ‘r,’ Larry.” She sounded patient, as if she were used to correcting people about the particulars of her title. But how often can that happen? Larry thought, and he was suddenly deeply confused.
+
“Oh, sorry, ma’am, uh, Miz Loring, but I wanted to know whether you’d like to, ah, buy some…” Larry put his head in his hand and started twirling his hair in his finger, a nervous habit he’d had since childhood, and closed his eyes tightly. “Why don’t you have anything better to do?”
+
Immediately he knew it was the wrong question. Even before the silence on the other end moved past impatience and into stunned, Larry had a mini-drama written and staged within his mind: she would call customer service and complain loudly into the representative’s ear. The rep would send a memo to the head of telemarketing requesting disciplinary action, and the head would delegate the action to Larry’s immediate supervisor, David. David would saunter over to Larry’s cubicle sometime within the next week, depending on when he got the memo and when he felt like crossing fifty feet of office space, and have one of what David liked to call “chats” but what Larry knew were lectures. After about half an hour of “chatting” David would give Larry a warning and ask him to come in for overtime to make up for the discretion, and walk back slowly to his office, making small talk with the cubicled workers on the way. The world suddenly felt too small for Larry, or he too big for it.
+
Quietly, with the same patience but with a bigger pain, Jane said, “My husband just left me and I thought you could take my mind off of him for just a minute,” and hung up.
+
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+ The ocean overflows with camels | Autocento of the breakfast table
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The ocean overflows with camels
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We found your shirt deep in the dark water, caught on the clothesline of sleeping pills. Your head on the shore was streaming tears like sleeves or the coronas of saints saved from fire. The burning bush began crying like a child who misses his mother. Traffic slammed shut like an eye. God’s mean left hook knocked us out, and we began swimming. Bruises bloomed like algae on a lake. Your father beat your chest and screamed for someone to open a window. The air stopped breathing. Fish clogged its gills. Birds sang too loudly, trying to drown out your father’s cries, but all their sweetness was not enough. No polite noises will be made anymore, he told us, clawing your breastbone. He opened your heart to air again. Camels flowed from you both like water from the rock. God spoke up, but nobody listened to him. We hung you up on the line to dry.
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+ To Daniel | Autocento of the breakfast table
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To Daniel
+
an elaboration of a previous comment
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+
There are more modern ideals of beauty than yours, young padowan. Jessica has some assets, that I’ll give you easily, but in my women I prefer pizzazz.
+
I don’t want to bring you down, or make you think that your perfected woman isn’t so. It’s just that, like Adam said, 2006 has come and gone. What did she do
+
in that year anyway? IMDB has, surprisingly, none, though in ’05 she’s in four titles. Sin City I’ve never seen, although from many I’ve
+
heard it’s good. But it’s still irrelevant— no matter how comely, she lacks talent.
He read in a magazine that the universe as we know it is actually a hologram, a three-dimensional projection of a lower, two-dimensional, “realer” reality. The article said that this model explains things like quantum entanglement, what it called “spooky action at a distance.”
+
After he finished, he ran back out to his Writing Shack and hammered out a Treatise on Literature as Spooky Action. His mind was reeling. He typed out an entire notecard on the subject.
+
He stopped to catch his breath. Reading it over, he realized he was completely wrong. “Paper is made from trees” he thought “and so is furniture.” He had thought that ART and CRAFT were two separate enterprises but he realized in a flash that they were two sides of the same building. Were there other walls?
He couldn’t find a shirt to go to work in. They all had stains on them somewhere. He pulled out a vest to put on over the stains but somehow all of them were still visible. Most of them were unidentifiable but one he thought could have come from that peach he ate two weeks before. Another looked like toothpaste but he was paranoid it was something else.
+
When he took the bus into work he couldn’t relax. He was paranoid everyone was staring at his stain and kept looking out the corners of his eyes to make sure they weren’t. They didn’t seem to be but they could also be looking away just as he looked at them. “The Observation Paradox” he muttered to himself.
+
Jill was the only one to notice the stain at work. She came around to his cubicle during a break because he dared not show his stain in the break room. “You have a stain on your shoulder” she said “it looks like toothpaste.” “Do I” he feigned ignorance but went red at the same time “I didn’t see that there this morning.” “How do you get toothpaste on your shoulder?” “I don’t know skills I guess” he said and she grinned. “You know vinegar will take that out” she said “although I think I like it. You should start a museum of shirt stains!” “I don’t have that many shirts with stains” he said frowning. “Yes you do” she said.
TREATISE ON LITERATURE AS "SPOOKY
+ ACTION FROM A DISTANCE"
+
+ There is this thing called "spooky
+ action at a distance." Einstein
+ mentioned it first I believe. It
+ is about how two electrons can act
+ like they are right next to each
+ other although they are very far
+ away (lightyears even). For a long
+ time this puzzled scientists until
+ someone (not Einstein) figured out
+ that maybe the universe is a
+ hologram or projection. So what
+ appears to be very far apart in
+ the hologram might actually be
+ very close in the substrate
+ reality.
+ I want to talk about this
+ effect in literature. In literature
+ the writer writes words on a
+ substrate (paper) and later the
+ reader reads the same words off
+ the substrate. Although the writer
+ and reader might be very far apart
+ from each other in time and space,
+ they experience the same effect
+ from reading the words. Even the
+ writer reading his own words after
+ he has written them becomes a
+ reader and feels who he was at
+ that time, like a ghost.
+
+ PROBLEMS:
+ Maybe the substrate isn't
+ paper it's what the writing is
+ about. Where is the hologram? Are
+ physics and literature comparable?
+ What if the universe isn't a
+ hologram what then?
He dropped the penny in the dryer, turned it on, and turned around. “What” he called upstairs, pretending not to hear his mother’s question over the noise of the dryer. He had heard her ask “Could you bring up my underwear from the dryer” but didn’t want to touch her underwear any more than he had to. “I don’t want to bring up your underwear” he said to himself, and walked back upstairs as his mother was calling down again for her underwear.
+
“Did you get them” she asked when he opened the basement door to the kitchen. She was sitting at the table playing dominoes. “Get what” he asked. She peered at him and said “my underwear.”
+
“Oh I didn’t see them” he answered. He reflexively opened the refrigerator, reflexively bent down, reflexively tried to feign non-disappointment (appointment? he thought) at seeing the same disappointing empty pickle jar, old head of lettuce, crusty mayonnaise he’d seen already on the way down to switch his laundry over. “Paul” she said in that way that means Look at me. Paul looked at her.
+
“You had to get them out of the dryer to put your clothes in. Where did you put them?”
He didn’t go back into the shed for a long time. His hatchet was in there, and his axe. He didn’t want to face them. His papers, he decided, could wait in the top drawer for a while before being looked at again. The pain medication made him loopy. He couldn’t think as well as he was used to, which wasn’t well to begin with. Even saying his thoughts out loud, it was as though they were on the TV in the next room. Someone was cheering. They had just won a car.
+
His mother came in with lunch on a tray. It was hot tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich. “What have you been doing all day” she asked “you haven’t just been staring at the wall have you?” He had been staring at the wall most of the day. The wall without the window on it, with the woodgrain wallpaper. “No” he said. “What have you been doing then” she asked setting the tray down on his lap. He sat up and almost upset it, but she caught it before it spilled anything. “Composing in my head” he lied. “A novel of my experience.”
+
“Do you really think anyone will want to read about you” she asked and walked out of the room.
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+ We played those games too | Autocento of the breakfast table
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We played those games too
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I saw two Eskimo girls playing a game blowing on each other’s’ vocal chords to make music on the tundra. I thought about how once we played the same game and the sounds blowing over the chords of our throats was the same as a wind over frozen prairie. We are the Eskimo girls who played the game that night to keep ourselves warm. I run my hands over my daughter’s voicebox as she hums a song about a seal and about killing the seal and about skinning it and rendering the blubber into clear oil to light lamps. I remember you are my lamp. She remembers you although you left before she arrived. I can never tell her about you. I will never be able to express that taste of your oil as we pushed our throats together. I will never be able to say how we share this blemish like conjoined twins. I will fail you always to remember you.
“Tell us a joke” everyone asks of the clown. He sits on a log and begins to think. Everyone waits gap-mouthed in anticipation. A slight breeze ruffles the clown’s coat, his pompom buttons, his bright red hair. His nose becomes redder in the cold. Hours pass. All but the most dedicated of joke listeners leave him to rot for all they may care.
+
The clown opens his mouth to speak but no words come out. A tear falls down his cheek, and another. He begins to sob. The last joke listener comes over to comfort him. She puts a hand on his shoulder. He looks up at her, red face, red nose, white lips, and says “Thank you.” He vanishes from the clearing. The last joke listener sits on the log and looks up at the sky. The moon is full. The world creaks on its axis.
+
Paul looked up to the space on the wall where a window should be. The shadow of his face wavered in the candle light. He looked back down at the card he’d been writing on. He read the card. He crossed out the for all they may care in the first paragraph, and “Thank you” from the second one. “What could he say” he thought to himself. “What could he possibly say to her.” He went outside to clear his head with a cigarette. He took his axe with him this time.
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+ Words and meaning | Autocento of the breakfast table
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Words and meaning
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“How astonishing it is that language can almost mean, / and frightening that it does not quite,” Jack Gilbert opens his poem “The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart.” In a similar vein, Hass’s “Meditation at Legunitas” states, “A word is elegy to what it signifies.” These poems get to the heart of language, and express the old duality of thought: by giving a word to an entity, it is both tethered and made meaningful.
+
Words are the inevitable byproduct of an analytic mind. Humans are constantly classifying and reclassifying ideas, objects, animals, people, into ten thousand arbitrary categories. A favorite saying of mine is that “Everything is everything,” a tautology that I like, because it gets to the core of the human linguistic machine, and because every time I say it people think I’m being disingenuous. But what I mean by “everything is everything” is that there is a continuity to existence that works beyond, or rather underneath, our capacity to understand it through language. Language by definition compartmentalizes reality, sets this bit apart from that bit, sets up boundaries as to what is and is not a stone, a leaf, a door. Most of the time I think of language as limiting, as defining a thing as the inverse of everything is not.
+
In this way, “everything is everything” becomes “everything is nothing,” which is another thing I like to say and something that pisses people off. To me, infinity and zero are the same, two ways of looking at the same point on the circle–of numbers, of the universe, whatever. Maybe it’s because I wear an analogue watch, and so my view of time is cyclical, or maybe it’s some brain trauma I had in vitro, but whatever it is that’s how I see the world, because I’m working against the limitations that language sets upon us. I think that’s the role of the poet, or of any artist: to take the over-expansive experience of existing and to boil it down, boil and boil away until there is the ultimate concentrate at the center that is what the poem talks around, at, etc., but never of, because it is ultimately made of language and cannot get to it. A poem is getting as close as possible to the speed of light, to absolute zero, to God, while knowing that it can’t get all the way there, and never will. A poem is doing this and coming back and showing what happened as it happened. Exegesis is hard because a really good poem will be just that, it will be the most basic and best way to say what it’s saying, so attempts to say the same thing differently will fail. A poem is a kernel of existence. It is a description of the kernel. It is.
He sat down at his writing desk and removed his new pen from its plastic wrapping. He remembered how to fill it from The View from Saturday, which he’d read as a kid. It had been one of his favorite books. He remembered the heart puzzle they completed, the origin of the word “posh,” and most of all his fourth-grade teacher Ms. (Mrs? He could never remember) Samovar. He smiled as he opened the lid on the ink well he’d just bought.
+
He dipped his pen in the inkwell, screwed the converter piston up, and watched as nothing entered the chamber. He screwed it back down and up again, while dipping the nib more deeply into the ink well. He watched as again nothing filled the capsule. He screwed it down a third time. His thumb knocked the inkwell over somehow by accident.
+
As he swore, stood up and away from the table, and went into the house proper for paper towels, he resolved to buy a typewriter.
While chopping a tree in the woods with his hatchet (a Christmas gift from his mother) a bird he’d never heard before cried out. He jerked his head up and to the right as the hatchet fell down and to the left. It cut deep into the back of his left hand. A low thud didn’t echo in the forest because all the needles and snow absorbed sound well the sound.
+
When he got back to the house his hand wrapped in the end of his shirt he still felt no pain. He called for his mother and found her watching TV in the main room. He stayed in the kitchen not wanting to get blood on the carpet. She turned around cigarette dangling from her open mouth said “Oh god what happened.”
+
She drove him to the hospital in the car. The radio stayed off the entire way. Paul wanted to turn it on but he didn’t want the desire not to annoy his mother was stronger. They drove in silence.
+
At the hospital after the X-rays and stitching and pain medication prescription the doctor said “You got lucky, son. If that axe had hit a half-inch lower you’d have lost your hand. You won’t get full mobility back because we had to tie the tendons, but with therapy you should be able to work it pretty well.”
+
On the drive back home all he could think was that he was glad he didn’t hit his writing hand.
He would enter data at work for fifty minutes and then go on break. He would walk down the hallway to the breakroom, which had a white refrigerator, a black microwave on a brown plyboard cart stocked with powdered creamer, sugar, and swizzle sticks, a dark red coffee maker, and yellow paint on the wall. He’d remember that somewhere he’d read an article about yellow walls being calming. “They use yellow in asylums” he’d say to himself.
+
He would sit down at the round table covered in newspapers that took up the half of the room not occupied by the refrigerator, microwave, or counter with coffee pot and sink. He didn’t drink coffee but he would think about starting. He would shuffle the newspapers around on the table and see they were all the same ones as an hour ago. “Or technically fifty minutes ago” he would say to himself. Sometimes Jill would come in for a cup of coffee. She would always check that her lunch, which she brought each morning in a Tupperware container with a blue lid with her name written on it in black sharpie, was still there. Once he asked her why she checked.
+
“Why do you always check if your lunch is in the fridge” he asked. “I don’t” she said. “Oh I thought you did.” “I don’t think so.” “Why do you check at all?” “Once it was stolen out of the fridge and returned empty before I had a chance to eat my lunch” she said. “So you make sure it won’t happen again.” “No I’m waiting for the day that it does.”